For Kids

What makes you stutter?

Everyone is different. Your best friend may be better at math than you are. And maybe you're better than he is at art. Maybe another one of your friends is good at sports and can run really fast. Everyone is good at different things.

Help For Stuttering

It may seem like you are the only person in the world who stutters. That is not true. And, there are lots of people who can help you with your problem. Your mom and dad can. You can also go to a speech teacher. Many speech teachers know a lot about stuttering. They will teach you how to make talking easier. Speech teachers will also listen to what you think and how you feel about your stuttering. They can really understand your problem.

If You Are Teased

Children tease each other for many different reasons. A child who is taller than the others is sometimes teased. The same may happen to a child who is very short.

You may be teased about a big nose or giant ears. About being sick a lot or about not running fast. About having red hair or about being slow at math. About not wearing the right clothes or about not having a bicycle.

Kids Trouble at Recess

Language Undefined

Letters

Language Undefined

Paperboy Delivers for Kids

Paperboy is about an 11-year-old boy who throws the meanest fastball in town, but talking is a whole different ball game.

Stuttering: For Kids, By Kids 2.0

Kids' Letters and Drawings

Notes to the Teacher

Sometimes I Just Stutter

Pages

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Marilyn Monroe

From Edward S. Herrington's letter to Southcoasttoday.com

I am writing in response to "The importance of voice" (May 29), which mentioned that famous actor James Earl Jones struggled with stuttering. Another famous voice that you cited was the trademark breathy voice of Marilyn Monroe; however, you did not make mention of the fact that Marilyn Monroe also struggled with stuttering at various points in her life, sometimes very painfully.

Lewis Carroll

The recent Disney version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, garnered a great deal of media hype. Even though the mainstream media has not made mention that Carroll was a person who stuttered, his family history gives credence to the discovery of the genetic link to stuttering. Carroll was born to parents who were first cousins; almost all of their eleven children, three girls and seven boys, struggled with stuttering past childhood.

Bill Walton

From BillWalton.com

Thank you for your interest in my life long problem with my speech and communication skills. I was a very shy and reserved young man who could not speak at all without severely stuttering until I was 28 years old. Always a success in the classroom and on the basketball court, I took refuge in the things that I did well as a youngster. A straight A student, my athletic abilities covered the deficiencies that limited my overall growth and development. The game of basketball was my religion, the gym my church. It was a convenient way of avoiding my responsibilities of developing my human relation skills.

When I was 28, a chance encounter at a social event with Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Glickman completely changed my life in so many ways that things have never been the same since, nor have they ever been better. That day, in a very brief, private conversation (one way, mind you, since I literally could not speak at the time) Marty explained, patiently and concisely, that talking, communicating was a skill not a gift or a birthright and that like any skill, whether it be sports, music, business or whatever, needed to be developed over a lifetime of hard work, discipline, organization and practice. Marty gave me some simple tips that day and then encouraged me to take those keys and apply them to methods of learning that I had received from the special teachers that I had come across in my life, particularly the 6 Hall of Fame basketball coaches that I had played for throughout my career. The beginning of my whole new life was as simple as that. No gimmicks, tricks or shortcuts. Just the realization that with some help, guidance and a lot of hard work that I too could do what seemed so easy, simple and natural to everyone else, yet seemed impossibly out of my reach and comprehension.

Kenyon Martin

Kenyon Martin, the basketball sensation who was named to the NBA’s All Star Team in 2004, joins other famous people who stutter in a new brochure. The brochure - which unfolds into a small poster - is available free of charge from The Stuttering Foundation.

The poster is intended to give children and adults who stutter inspiration as they grapple with their speech disorder.

Frank Wolf

This Virginian congressman has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981. The longtime supporter of the Stuttering Foundation drew national attention to childhood stuttering in 2006 when he submitted an article about Tiger Woods from the SFA newsletter to the Congressional Record. The congressman is featured in the Stuttering Foundation's Famous People Who Stutter brochure.