Stuttering – A Listener's Guide - 2
- Details
- Category: Personal Commentary
- Published: Sunday, 01 May 2011 22:10
- Written by Jaan Pill
I want to briefly share my own story.
I began to stutter at the age of six. In my late teens and early twenties, I stuttered severely. Sometimes I could not get out any words at all. One time, I phoned someone and tried to say hello. I found the “H” sound at the beginnings of words especially hard to say. After about thirty seconds or so of trying to say hello, I just hung up the phone, without saying a word. When I was thirty, I attended a three-week stuttering therapy program in Toronto. I attained some level of fluency as a result.
About a week after the Toronto clinic, however, I was speaking with a friend on the phone, and my newly acquired fluency skills flew out the window. I did retain enough of these skills, however, to graduate from a faculty of education. In the early years of my career, I taught small special education classes in Toronto.
Eleven years later, in May 1987, I read an article in the Toronto Star describing a stuttering treatment program in Edmonton. In July of that year, I flew to Edmonton and attended a three-week treatment program at the Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research, or ISTAR for short.
Einer Boberg and Deborah Kully of Edmonton developed this program in the mid-1980s. The program has been continuously updated ever since. In Edmonton, I relearned how to speak. I like to say I learned fluency as a second language.
The clinic taught five fluency skills.
These included:
- Easy breathing
- Smooth blending of syllables
- Light touches on consonants
- Easy onset of voicing
- Prolongation of vowel sounds
I knew from experience that I would have to work hard to maintain these skills after I left the clinic. I practised these skills every day for over four years. I recorded large numbers of conversations and phone calls, and analyzed two-minute segments of them, to ensure that I was applying the skills correctly.