Celebrating National Stuttering Awareness Week

Today marks the beginning of National Stuttering Awareness Week, a weeklong spotlight on the condition affecting more than 70 million people worldwide. This year, we are focusing on fighting myths associated with the speech disorder. For as long as people have been stuttering, there have been myths surrounding the condition. We work hard to raise awareness about stuttering, to provide help to the stuttering community, and to set the record straight.

Myth: People who stutter are not smart.
Reality: There is no link whatsoever between stuttering and intelligence. The Stuttering Foundation keeps an updated list of famous people who stutter, which includes world-renown scientists Charles Darwin and Alan Turing.

Myth: Nervousness causes stuttering.
Reality: Nervousness does not cause stuttering. Nor should we assume that people who stutter are prone to be nervous, fearful, anxious, or shy. They have the same full range of personality traits as those who do not stutter. In fact, the Stuttering Foundation has created an “I Stutter Card” for travelers moving through airport security and Customs, during police stops and other interactions with authority figures.

Myth: Stuttering can be “caught” through imitation or by hearing another person stutter.
Reality: You can’t “catch” stuttering. No one knows the exact causes of stuttering, but recent research indicates that family history (genetics), neuromuscular development, and the child’s environment, including family dynamics, all play a role in the onset of stuttering.

Myth: It helps to tell a person to “take a deep breath before talking,” or “think about what you want to say first.”
Reality: This advice only makes a person more self-conscious, making the stuttering worse. More helpful responses include listening patiently and modeling slow and clear speech yourself.

Myth: Stress causes stuttering.
Reality: As mentioned above, many complex factors are involved. Stress is not the cause, but it certainly can aggravate stuttering.

For more than 70 years, the Stuttering Foundation has served as a trusted resource for the stuttering community, offering brochures, e-books, podcasts, videos, a magazine, virtual learning and multiple social media channels to spread timely and accurate information about stuttering.

Posted May 10, 2021

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Byron Pitts

Byron Pitts has brought much attention to stuttering with his memoir, Step Out on Nothing: How Faith and Family Helped Me Conquer Life’s Challenges, released in September, 2009. The book not only details his speech difficulties, but also his illiteracy until age 12 and his unstable family life. Pitts overcame the odds to become the chief national correspondent with ABC News.

King George

In November 2010, worldwide movie audiences were presented with a most interesting and unusual movie release with The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth as King George VI and Helena Bonham Carter as his wife Elizabeth.

Unfortunately, history may have forgotten the courageous and inspiring story of Prince Albert who stuttered badly and never dreamed that he would ever be king when his older brother, King Edward VIII, abruptly abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee.

Jack Paar

While Jack Paar is among the most prominent of the entertainers on the Stuttering Foundation’s list of Famous People Who Stutter, he deserves special recognition as he was among the first to openly address his stuttering in public. As host of The Tonight Show from 1957-1962, he spoke of his difficulties as a stuttering child and teenager, giving hope to young people.

Winston Churchill

Seeking to "remove Winston Churchill's stutter by second guessing the diagnosis" indicates neither a truthful retelling of history nor an informed opinion about a complex speech disorder, say experts in the field of speech-language pathology.

Recent news reports that quote Dr. John Mather, a Washington physician, as saying that Churchill's stutter "is a lie" brought adamant critical response from specialists in the field of stuttering and fluency disorders.

Bill Withers

While Bill Withers has long been on the Stuttering Foundation's list of Famous People Who Stutter, many people probably didn’t realize he stuttered. He passed away on March 30, 2020.

Born in 1938 in Slab Fork, W.V., Withers was the youngest of six children. When his father died when Withers was small, he was raised by his mother and grandmother, both of whom worked as domestics.