Stuttering in Mainstream Media – Blog 9: The Do’s and Don’ts of Stuttering

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is going to be the 10th blog in the Stuttering in Mainstream Media and is going to be about the Do’s and Don’ts of Stuttering. Even though I have mentioned in a few previous blogs about how stuttering affects everyone differently, there are a few trends that have emerged. In this blog, I will be briefly talking about some of these trends and just bullet pointing others. If you can think of any that I haven’t included please let me know. I have seen a few other posts about the do’s and don’ts of stuttering but they only focus on stuttering in children, whereas stuttering affects people of all age.

Do’s

• Allow the person to finish their sentence, don’t interrupt them.
• Be Patient – if a person is stuttering, please give them time to finish. Rushing someone who stutters will make them stutter more and will cause them to get stressed.
• Encourage a person with a stutter to speak, don’t leave them alone in the quiet.
•  If someone is stuck on a word and cannot get it out, try rewording the sentence/question? Rewording the question allows the stutterer to think of a different word that they may not get stuck on.
• If you’re meeting someone new, mention that you have a stutter if you think it is important too
• Live a normal life –  A stutter doesn’t stop you doing what you want to do in life
• Maintain eye contact and concentration when talking to someone with a stutter
• Reassure a stutterer if they are nervous
• Speak to a speech therapist about your stutter

Don’t

• Allow a person with a stutter to isolate themselves.
• Be embarrassed about stuttering
• Criticise /Mock their stutter – There are some things that you just cannot joke/ have banter about. A stutter is one of them.
• Don’t say phrases like “slow down” or relax”. Even though they sound like you’re helping, they just make it worse.
• Finish a sentence for them – People think it helps but all it does is make a stutterer feel worse about themselves and think that their voice is less valuable than someone else.
• Lose your patience if someone is stuttering a lot

That’s all for today’s blog! Even though this blog may seem a bit shorter than the others in the series it is still very important. Like I said at the start of this blog if you can think of any points that I have missed, please let me know and I will add them. There are lots of guides out there for stuttering but they are mostly aimed at children. I wanted to do a series that was targeting every age.

In regards to the future of this series, I think that I am going to keep it going for a little bit longer. The polls that I ran last week came back fairly in favour of keeping the series going so I will do around 2/3 more blogs for it and then I will put it on hold for a while. I am not 100% sure at the minute what the next series will be but when it comes closer to the time I will run a few polls on the Facebook page.

Thanks for reading and I hope you all have a great day!

James