Myths

If you look on this page and read my bio you will see that I have been stuttering from the time I learned to talk. There are many reasons for the causes of stuttering but the one with which I am most familiar is the one my mother told me.

I am left handed (well, ambidextrous really) and my mother told me that when my grandmother, being very old world and old school, noticed this she took it upon herself to break me of my left handedness. So the story goes, I resisted that change and as a result came the stutter. I don't know if Grandma hit me with the evil eye but the upshot was that I would never talk the same again.

When I was growing up I had a friend, George, who lived down the street. As fate would have it, George stuttered too so we got along well. One day I asked the question, "did your grandmother try to make you right handed also? Is that why you stutter?" He looked at me like I had three heads with an ear protruding out of each forehead.

So, I went headlong into the story about the genesis ofmy problem and, I assumed, his too. My story was met with a quizzical look and then a quick dismissal. George didn't believe this could happen and it was never discussed again.

Did I believe that story? I guess you could say that I did because it was my only frame of reference. Some people didn't know why they stuttered but I knew its origins and I felt safe within this story. My mother was just trying to protect her baby boy from one of the uncertainties of life. No one knows for sure the root cause of stuttering. Experts have an idea, perhaps some childhood trauma somewhere along the line, but it is all a crap shoot.

I believe that is why there are a thousand so called "cures" for stuttering but you will never see any advertising for them on this blog. There are therapies that claim a 100 percent cure rate. I would have to be pretty naive to think that stutterers, even though we have a hard time getting words out, don't communicate with each other. It may take some time but we do. Anyway, if there was a cure with a 100 percent certainty we would know about it and use it and you would never see this blog or another ad for a stuttering cure again.

But we all know that isn't true because stuttering is the easiest to treat and the hardest to cure which is why I write this blog. Hopefully, this will present stuttering in a different light. I make no excuses and I have no cures. All I can impart are those things that have worked for me and if you have any comments about something I missed, do not hesitate to let me know or call me out on it.