Road Doesn't Have to be Rocky for Those Who Stutter

National Stuttering Awareness Week earlier this month brought much-needed attention to stuttering, which affects 1% of adults and 5% of children worldwide. Stuttering in the workplace does not get much ink.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1924, my father, who founded The Stuttering Foundation, found himself at a difficult point in his professional career. My father received various speech therapies in his life; some were helpful, and some were not. He vowed that if he were ever successful, he would do something to help his fellow people who stutter.

After much struggle, he was fortunate to achieve great success when he joined his brother at the founding of NAPA Genuine Parts Company. In 1947, my father fronted his money to establish The Stuttering Foundation to fulfill his wish to help people who stutter so that others would not have to endure the hardships he faced as a young man. In the last 78 years, we have helped children and adults who stutter in the United States and Canada, and we have a global outreach to 155 nations in diverse ways. 

Many countries lag in speech services. We send “care packages” of our materials and give scholarships to speech therapists to attend our workshops for speech professionals. Our website provides a fountain of free resources that anyone with a computer can access.

My father wrote “Self-Therapy for Those Who Stutter,” which has been translated into 26 languages, to “all who seek relief from the burden of stuttering,” which means that all who wish to improve their speech and embark on the path to stop stuttering. This “relief” also applies to those who embrace self-acceptance of their stuttering and seek a positive attitude in coping with the day-to-day challenges. In fact, in later years, copies of “Self-Therapy for Those Who Stutter” were widely distributed free, partly through the generosity of NAPA Genuine Parts. 

With the recent tragic news of actor Bruce Willis battling frontotemporal dementia and his wife originally thinking his symptoms of aphasia were signs of the actor’s lifelong battle with stuttering, we have received a lot of inquiries about our past celebrity profile on Willis and his stuttering titled “Bruce Willis — Look Who’s Talking” on our website. 

For the public to know that a giant of an A-list celebrity like Willis has struggled with stuttering puts a human face on the speech problem. After 20 years of his speech being tripped up by stuttering, Willis found through his college drama classes that a combination of speech therapy and drama guided him to the fluent speech that so painfully had eluded him until that point in his life.

In “Self-Therapy for Those Who Stutter,” my father tries to guide readers to various scenarios and mechanisms that might work for them, as the combination of drama and speech therapy worked for Willis. 

There is no sure avenue that will work for everyone. Speech therapy is subjective. There is no “one size fits all.” What works for one person may not work for another. My father’s book provides many options and avenues for self-help. If my father were alive, he would most likely believe that every person who stuttered could have the potential to turn their speech around like Willis if they so wanted.

When the Stuttering Foundation was founded in 1947, no one had dreamed about something like the internet that could make resources so widely available.

Still, he was dreaming of helping his fellow people who stutter navigate the minefields of speech that only a person who stutters would know.

This column was distributed by InsideSources.com and used here with permission.