Today’s blog is going to be a small blog all about Christmas this year. Christmas is a time of year that has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people. To some people, it is about the gifts you receive, some the gifts you give and some about spending time with family and friends. Whatever Christmas is to you, I hope you have had a good one!
Christmas this year for me has been all about family and relaxing. One of the highlights every year for my family is when we all go up to my grandmother’s house on Christmas morning and see each other. It is a great way to have a small catch up and to see how everyone is doing. It is just one of the things that help to keep family close and keep the communication lines flowing.
Another large part of Christmas this year for me has been relaxing and unwinding. The first term in University this year has been very busy for me and it is lovely to have a little break. I do apologise for the lack of posts over the past week, however, I did not want to rush write blogs and publish them as they would lose their message and purpose. I will go back to posting regularly after this week so keep an eye out for some interesting posts coming your way!
That is all I want to talk about in today’s blog! Today’s blog was always going to be a smaller, little update blog that is going to restart all of the blogs for the page. There are some big announcements coming soon that I’m really happy to announce so stay tuned! I hope you’ve all had a good Christmas! See you in the next blog!
Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good day!
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
I am very happy to announce that this week we surpassed the 5,000 view mark! This is a huge step forward for the page and it is all thanks to all of you lot, our readers! We are growing so much faster than I originally thought the page would and it is amazing to see!
As the page has been doing so well lately I feel like now is a good time to ask, what sort of content would you like to see more of? Would you like to see more poems on the page? Maybe longer posts or smaller posts that really tackle important issues? Would you like blogs on a certain topic/topics? Let me know what you want to see and I’ll do my best to do it for you!
There are quite a few exciting things happening with the page going into the new year but I’ll wait until it is closer to the time to give any more details on that. Guest blogs are definitely something that I want to see more of going into the future of the page! if you have any ideas for a blog or know someone who might be interested in writing please let me know!
Today’s blog is going to be a little bit different from my usual blogs. Today we are going to be looking at which blog series has been your favourite. In my opinion, evaluation is one of the best things that you can do on a blog page and I feel like it is time to see what everybody thinks of the different series that have been launched on the page.
Have you got a particular series that you really enjoyed reading? Is there a series that you wished I wrote more blogs on? Are there any that you feel went on too long? Now is the time to say it!
To help answer this question we are going to have to look at all the series that I have done on the page. This will include series such as Looking Into Male Mental Health, Stuttering in Mainstream Media and Being Different. Every series that I have written up to now will be included in the questions. So the question stands which one was your favourite?
There’s no right or wrong answer to this question so please answer honestly. Would you like to see an old series come back? Do you want the current series to end? Do you want a completely new series on a completely new topic? The only way I can find out what you all want to see is by you telling me!
That is all I wanted to talk about in today’s blog! Please let me know what your favourite series is in the comments or via our Facebook page!
Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day,
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
I am very proud to say that as of the start of this week I had the honour of writing a blog that has been posted on the Henley Careers blog page! It is a huge honour and achievement for me and my business and it is a massive step in the right direction for my developing career. The blog itself is all about Stuttering and as National Stuttering day was on the 22nd of October I feel like it is a great time to learn more about Stuttering and how it can affect people in the world of work.
I want to say a massive thank you to Sarah Chorley and the rest of the Henley Careers team for giving me the chance to write this blog and I hope we can work together more in the future! The blog is live now so if you are interested, please take a look. If you read the blog and enjoy it there are plenty more blogs on both my page and the Henley Careers page!
Stuttering affects approximately 68 million people in the world, but do we ever stop and think about how a stutter will affect someone in and around the world of work?
Stuttering is a condition that I think doesn’t get the focus that it needs. People think that a stutter just affects how you speak but it can affect you at a much deeper level too. In this blog, we are going to be taking a closer look at what exactly a stutter is and then we are going to look at stuttering in the world of work, how it affects people in interviews and how employers could potentially behave if they are interviewing someone with a stutter.
What is a stutter?
Stuttering is a condition that has a lot of different definitions. Personally I like the definition provided by the NHS, as it breaks stuttering down into three separate definitions:
Yesterday marked the last day for out Stuttering in Mainstream Media series for now. Since I started this page back in February 2019 we have always had a blog series running and now we can start a new one. We have covered topics such as Alzheimer’s Acceptance, Male Mental Health and Being Different already. The question that I want to ask is what type of series do you want to see next?
Do you have an idea for a blog series? Do you want me to cover a certain topic/topics? Would you yourself like to write a blog series and then I can publish it? This page thrives on audience participation so I think now is the time to bring it back. I can work around any ideas you have so please feel free to message me your thoughts!
If anyone wants to collaborate on writing a series too that is excellent! Let me know what you think!
Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from you soon,
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
I am looking for a new writer for the page. What I am looking for from a writer is either a few individual blogs or for them to write a series of blogs that I can publish. There will be no salary for the blog however you will be given full credit on each post you do. The blogs can be about anything as long as we can find a link back to Stuttering, Stress or Mental Health.
Everyone is welcome to write a few blogs for the page, there is no restriction on who can write and who cannot. I will read through each post before it is published just to make sure it is okay and reads well but it is very unlikely that I will actually make changes to someone’s work. If I do see any changes that need to be made then I would discuss it with you beforehand.
To apply for the blog writing job/position simply fill out the form below or you can complete the form on our Facebook page if that is what you prefer. I will try to look through all of the forms ASAP. If you do not want to become a fully-fledged writer for the page that is also completely fine. If you just want to write one or two blogs or one every so often then that is great as well, as long as you let me know!
The form on this page is going to be really easy to fill out. The name and email address fields take a few seconds to fill out then we get to the comments part. In the comments section try and write about why you want to write a few blogs/ what sort of blogs you want to do and any experience you have in writing. Experience isn’t needed to be a blogger on my page but it is nice to see some work beforehand if there is any available.
Thanks for reading and I will see you all in the next blog! If you are interested in being a blogger for the page please fill out the form below!
One day it could be bright, the next it could be raining,
The sun always comes back though to brighten up your day,
The sun makes us feel happier, taking the sad times away,
Whatever we do in life we must take with pride,
Take each opportunity with a positive mindset and try to enjoy life’s ride.
Each year of our life can be turned into an episode,
Lessons we learn, the knowledge bestowed,
Embrace every chance to meet new people and friends,
Let them be there with you as you go through life’s bends,
Move forward through life with a positive mindset,
If you’re nervous about something get help, don’t sit there and fret.
Whatever we do in life we must take with pride,
Take each opportunity with a positive mindset and try to enjoy life’s ride.
Life isn’t always easy, but we need to try and see the good from the bad,
Always aim to be positive and happy, not negative and sad,
When life throws you a curveball it’s okay to get stressed,
When you surround yourself with good people, they help you to feel blessed,
Remember that everybody in life is writing their own book,
Each day a new page, a new mindset and look,
Whatever we do in life we must take with pride,
Take each opportunity with a positive mindset and try to enjoy life’s ride.
Thanks for reading! I hope you liked the poem. Let me know what you think in the comments below or on our Facebook page. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you in the next blog!
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
Growing up people always said to me that I could never be a teacher because of my stutter. I never understood this and I always questioned them saying why would my stutter hold me back? They never had a valid point to make in their answers and it led me to challenge their assumptions. Roll on to now and I have been a Lifeguard and Swimming Teacher for nearly 3 years.
Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!
Today’s blog is going to be the eighth blog in the Stuttering in Mainstream Media and is going to focus on how my stutter has affected me in my jobs as a Lifeguard and a Swimming Teacher. I am the type of person who likes to surpass people expectations. As mentioned above when I was younger people always told me that I couldn’t be a teacher due to my stutter when in reality the only thing holding me back from teaching was myself. Of course, my stutter can make the job harder in some cases but that doesn’t affect my ability as a teacher. That is one of the main points of this blog, don’t let a stutter hold you back in life. A stutter doesn’t stop you from doing things, however, it does alter your journey.
I completed my first lifeguarding course back in June 2016 and got a job as a Lifeguard in my local Swimming Pool around three months after. My position in work is exactly the same as any of the other lifeguards there, my stutter doesn’t change my job, however, it does change the way that I go about some things. In a job such as lifeguarding, there are obviously going to be some minor changes in how each lifeguard does things.
It can be quite hard to explain how stuttering has changed my job as most of the changes that I have discovered are all usually quite small. The major changes that I find are when it comes to talking to members of the public or other members of staff. I’ve been in my job for around three years now and I love learning new roles like how to work reception and how to teach in different ways. I started to notice the first major changes in my job when I was covering behind reception for a few minutes when I was still new at the pool.
Most of the customers in the pool recognised that I had a stutter if I started stuttering when serving them and they were really patient and polite about it, however, there were some customers who didn’t have the same attitude towards my stutter. It was very rare that a customer was ever rude to me behind the desk however like you have in any job there were one or two. There was one person who came to the desk and because I got stuck stuttering on a few words she started saying phrases like “spit it out” or “hurry up and get on with it”. After they said those phrases I didn’t really know how to react. As I was in work I had to stay professional but I just couldn’t comprehend why this customer was being so rude. Like I said previously nearly all of the customers coming to the pool were great but one or two of them really make you think.
The second major change is when it comes to communicating with members of the public on poolside. As you would expect in our jobs as lifeguards we do have to enforce the pool rules if members of the public are not abiding by them. In some cases when I would talk to them I would start stuttering. Most of the customers again were more than patient with me but it started to make me feel nervous to speak at times.
To my knowledge see there are few if any policies in workplaces when it comes to stuttering. how I see it is that as there is such a massive focus being aimed at mental health and stress management nowadays that we should try and bring some other subjects like stuttering back into focus as well. Stuttering and stress/ mental health do go hand in hand in some cases. Stuttering can lead to massive self-esteem and self-confidence issues in the world of work. The question that I like to ask is why hasn’t anything really been done to help people with a stutter in the world of work?
Being a Swimming teacher can be one of the most rewarding jobs going in my eyes. I love my job as a Swimming Teacher as I get to see swimmers progress from being scared to go into the water to doing 100 meter swims without stopping. Watching people progress through the different levels/stages of swimming is truly a great thing to watch and it is the reason why I used to love teaching so much.
In my experience of teaching, my stutter has never limited my ability to do my job. As you can expect I do sometimes get stuck on the odd word or I may repeat myself a few times but it doesn’t affect my ability as a teacher. When teaching younger children you automatically think that they will notice you stuttering and try and mimic it but out of the few hundred that I taught, I can only remember one or two doing it. Even those one or two kids weren’t even mimicking it maliciously, they just didn’t understand what a stutter was at that point.
One of the only changes that I noticed as a teacher with a stutter was how some of the parents would act to my teaching. There have been a few cases over the past three years where a parent has asked me if I should be allowed to teach as I have a stutter. This is where the main problems with stuttering come into play. Like I mentioned in a previous blog the only thing that stops you when you have a stutter is yourself and to a degree the people surrounding you. There is such an ingrown stigma in modern society about mental health and topics like stuttering that at times it feels like you are fighting a losing battle.
The fact that I stutter does not change my ability to teach. It may alter the way that I do some things but overall the outcome is the same. When I started to plan this blog I was thinking of all the problems that I have faced in my job and the realisation hit me. The problems that I have faced in my job are down to a lack of understanding of what a stutter is from a third party. I could list all of the issues that I have faced teaching and lifeguarding with a stutter but they all come down to this same link.
Most people do not think about the effect a stutter has on people because it is so rarely brought up in the media and in conversations. Stuttering, in my opinion, doesn’t get the credit it deserves as living with a stutter can be really tough. If you spend just 5-10 minutes talking to a person who has a stutter about their stutter it would start to make more sense. The stigma around a stutter can be linked in some way to the stigma in mental health. They both stem from a lack of understanding and just as mental health is changing now the focus has been put on it, stuttering could do with the same focus.
That’s all I want to talk about in today’s blog. I hope you all enjoy the blog and have a great day! Let me know what you think of it in the comments or on our Facebook page!
Thanks for reading,
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
The page has been growing so fast recently thanks to all of our supporters so I believe it is time to do another update post! As this post is going to be shorter than my usual posts I have also reblogged a blog all about self-esteem today. If you enjoy the post about reshaping how you see self-esteem be sure to check out the blogger’s other work, they have some excellent blogs!
First of all, we’re going to talk about BlogFest. When I first said that I was doing BlogFest I said that it was going to be one blog every other day, however, I have changed that a little bit. For some of the days in BlogFest, I have decided to do a double upload. I didn’t do a post about this because more content can’t be a bad thing! In regards to when the next BlogFest will be, I am not 100% sure at the minute. I need to start getting back into University work soon so the page will be going back to getting 2/3 new blogs a week for a while. The earliest date that I can say the next BlogFest will be at this time is the end of September/start of October. I’ll keep you all updated!
We have also hit some big milestones for the page. As of last week, we reached over 3,000 total views on the page! This is a massive step forward for the page and is a big motivator for me to keep doing blogs. The next milestone that I have for the page is 5,000 total views by the end of the year, which we are on track to beat easily! The page is growing really really fast and I am very grateful for all the help and support I have been getting, let’s keep it going and growing!
As well as our blog page doing well, our Facebook page has also been growing! As of last week, we have now hit over 200 likes on the page, which is amazing! If you haven’t visited the page before feel free to do so, you can access through the Facebook icon on the sidebar pf every blog or by typing Sweeney’s Blogs into the search bar on Facebook. On the page, I give updates to when posts are released and ideas for posts that I am thinking of doing and I share posts that I find that I think everyone would like seeing!
We now have our own Sweeney’s Blogs Spotify playlist! I am hoping to update the playlist weekly and it is going to have songs ranging from 1970- now! Hopefully, there’ll be something there that you’ll enjoy listening too! You can find the playlist by typing Sweeney’s Blogs into Spotify or through the following link:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0o8E5x2GB0yqct6FlVIhOj?si=fPkmxrcQQR69TD6gFUqgdg. Hope you enjoy the playlist! If you have any songs that you want to see on there let me know and I’ll add them!
Thank you all for reading! I hope you all have a great weekend! If anyone has any ideas for guest blogs or wants to write a few blogs for me to publish please get in touch with me and we can discuss it further!
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
People and indeed the world itself are forever evolving/changing. As times move on the way that we do things and even the way we think develops and evolves. Everything that we do has an effect on us as people and on our Mental Health as a result. As this effect happens the questions still stands: what actually is Mental Health and what actually affects it?
Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!
Today’s blog is going to be about what Mental Health is and how we as a society need to change our approach to Mental Health. I got the idea for this blog by talking to one of my mates at work. We were catching up about the past year in university and we moved onto the topic of academic difference. Now after we finished talking I asked if I can use this for a blog and he said that he cannot see how simply the word different can make a topic link to Mental Health, this is where the idea for the blog came from. In effect, we can link anything to Mental Health which is what I will talk about in more depth later on in the blog.
Firstly we need to take a look at exactly what is Mental Health. MentalHealth.gov, https://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/what-is-mental-health, describe Mental Health as “our emotional, psychological and social well-being.” They say that our Mental Health has an effect on ” how we think, feel and act” and it influences how we handle things like stress and how we make decisions. I quite like this definition as I feel like it is very close to my own.
To me, our Mental Health is who we are as people. It is how we think, how we process information, how we communicate and develop, Mental Health is us. It baffles me when people say how so many things are not related to Mental Health when in reality they are. Anything that has an effect on society, us as people and the way that we think and feel all make up what is known as our Mental Health. Nearly everything we do impacts our Mental Health and that is what we need to start thinking about. We need to get out of the loop that is Mental Health is only relevant when people are having problems as Mental Health is a constant. Even if we may not be suffering from a Mental Health condition, your Mental Health is constantly evolving and changing. The only way that change in Mental Health is actually going to happen is if we rethink what Mental health actually is and how we tackle it in day to day life.
An example that I like to refer to when talking about this ideology is the different reactions people have when they are going to work. Going to work is a topic that I don’t bring up much on the page but for this example, I think that it fits in well and is very relatable. The reaction that you give to going to work has an obvious link to whether you like your job or not. The way that you feel about your work acts as a foundation to how it impacts on your mental health, in a positive or negative way, and then it develops when we actually are going to work.
Let’s say for this example that you love the job that you are in. If you love your job then I believe it is safe to say that work makes you happy. This means that the foundation of how work impacts your Mental Health is a positive one. If you love your job then for the majority of the time you will be happy when you are leaving to go to work and you will be happy at work. This good mood that you have can correlate to a more positive Mental Health. A more positive Mental Health can link to a more positive look at work and indeed life in general. I am not saying that work determines your look on life but it does play a part.
Now we are going to look at the flip side of the coin. let’s say you hate the job you are in. Now if you hate your job then I think it is safe to say that going to work makes you unhappy. This means that the foundation of how work impacts your Mental Health is a more negative one, which is a complete opposite to the last scenario. The unhappy mood and mindset that you get going to or even thinking about work can correlate to a more negative look on life. As said above I am not saying that work determines your outlook on life but it definitely does play a part.
If going to work makes you unhappy or puts you in a bad mood then it is only natural that it is going to impact on other parts of your life. Once you get put in a bad mood it is often hard to not see everything else in that same mindset. So if you hate your job and going to work then if something else happens then you are more likely to approach it with a more negative mindset, hypothetically speaking. This is obviously the other way around if you love your job, I don’t think it is necessary to repeat the paragraph again just to flip everything.
I believe that is all I want to talk about in today’s blog! I hope that I have possibly broadened your horizons into what Mental Health actually is. Mental Health can indeed be everything and everywhere, Mental Health is us as people, it is who we are.
What do you think of today’s blog? Do you think that Mental Health can be everything or everywhere or do you have a different view? What do you define Mental Health as? Let me know what you think of the blog and your answers to the above questions in the comments on this blog or get in touch with me through the Facebook page!
Thank you all for reading!
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
How can you compare Stuttering to a printer? How can people understand a stutter if they haven’t got one themselves? How can learning about a stutter help treat it? I hope to answer these questions in today’s blog all about a Stuttering Theory I created myself.
Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!
Today’s blog is going to be the fifth blog in the Stuttering in Mainstream Media series and is going to be about The Printer Theory, a theory that I myself created to help visualise what living with a stutter is actually like. The theory itself can be interpreted in a number of different ways so if you interpret it a different way to how I am saying it that is more than fine.
I created The Printer Theory when I was asked to describe what living with a stutter is like to a few of my University friends this year. I had rarely been asked what living with a stutter was like before going to university so I didn’t have an answer ready at the time. This is when I decided to improvise and came up with The Printer Theory. Even though the theory doesn’t cover all aspects of life with a stutter I still think that it is a good place to start.
The first part of The Printer Theory is about the type of stutter where you just cannot get the words out, no matter how hard you try. So let’s say you have a document on the computer that you want to print out. You do all the normal things such as going to options, selecting print and then waiting for the printer to print the document out. Your document starts printing and then you get a paper jam in the printer.
If you have a paper jam then sending another twenty documents to the printer will not do anything, it will just put more pressure on the CPU of the computer and will affect the interrupts happening to the computer which will slow it down. Sending more documents to the computer will do nothing to help the actual problem which is the paper jam. This can easily be related to having a conversation with a person who has a stutter. If they are stuck on a particular word then asking them 20 more questions will do nothing to help them, it will just stress them out and might even lead to them stuttering more.
To fix a paper jam in the printer you would slowly find out the problem and then try a few ways to resolve it. Forcing the paper out when you have a paper jam will not help the issue, this is the exact same as dealing with a stutter. If someone who you are having a conversation with gets stuck on a word then you definitely should not try to force them to speak, they are trying they just cannot get the words out. What you need to do is simple.
The first step to helping someone who cannot get the words out is to actually realise that they are stuck on a word. If you recognise that someone is struggling then it makes it easier for you to understand and easier for them to get over it. The next step is to try a few different solutions. The first solution I recommend is maybe rewording the question that you asked them. Usually, if a person is simply stuck on one word then if you reword the question they will not even have to try and say it. There are lots of other techniques you can try if this doesn’t work but the key is to be patient, do not rush someone with a stutter as that will help no one.
One of the next links that a stutter has to a printer is when it comes to the order of entities. When you print something out, it is printed in a set order, this is the exact same as the way we speak. If the pages were printed in a random order then we would have to spend a lot of time simply working out the order of the pages and then what they are actually trying to tell us, this works the same with how we speak. We form sentences in a way that they are easy to understand and our words are in a logical order.
Just because a printer may take a long time to print out a particular page, it doesn’t mean that you write it out to try to beat the printer. If a printer was taking a while to print something out then you would wait patiently until it was finished, this links perfectly with a stutter. If a person is taking a while to say a particular word, sentence it does not give you the right to try and speak for them or just rush them into finishing. Rushing someone to speak when they have a stutter severely lowers their self-confidence and leads them to feel more embarrassed when they do eventually stutter.
This links in well to one of the main problems I have when speaking to people when they know that I have a stutter. Most people who do not have a stutter or who haven’t been close to someone who has a stutter think that finishing sentences for people who are struggling helps them out, it actually makes us feel useless. What people don’t actually think about, and this is not a criticism to people, it is just a fact, is that when we are stuttering we are trying really hard to get the words out. If you just jump in and finish the sentence for them, even if you do it with good intentions, then it makes us feel worthless. This paragraph is not meant to be having a go at anyone it is simply explaining something that most people don’t usually think of.
As you can see from the blog above there are lots of different links you can make between a printer and a person who stutters. There are indeed a lot more links that you can find but I have explained the main ones that I wanted to talk about in this blog. If you do find anymore and want to talk them through feel free to send me a message, I’ll more than happily respond!
Thanks for reading today’s blog! What do you all think? Next time you speak to someone with a stutter try and use a few of the points that I made today. Don’t rush them, be patient and please don’t finish sentences for them. I hope you all have a great week and remember to keep Highlighting the I in Difference!
Thanks again for reading and for all of the support,
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
We have had a lot of new readers join the page and the community recently and I believe that now is a good time to do an update post for the page in general. I know I did an update post last week but that was for the blog series that I run, today’s is going to be about the page in general.
Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!
First of all, I just wanted to say a big thank you for all the support that the blog has been getting recently. The speed in which the blog is growing still surprise me and it is excellent to see so many new readers each day. If you want to know more about me and why I write the blogs, feel free to check out the About Me page. The About Me page, https://sweeneysblog.com/about-me/, should hopefully cover all the areas on what the blog is and what we hope to achieve.
I do have a lot of ideas for where I see the blog going in the future. One of the next biggest steps that the blog is going to take is upgrading our website plan. Currently, the plan that I am using does not allow me to use plugins on the blog. Plugins are excellent tools that I believe would help take the blog to the next level. The only reason that I haven’t updated the page as of yet is that it is going to cost me around £300 a year. As I am a student living in University and the website itself doesn’t generate much income I simply cannot afford to update it in the future. In the meantime, I will do some research into what plugins would be good for the page when I can eventually afford to use them.
In terms of where the blog series are going on the page, I have started planing some of the series that I talked about in last weeks Future blog Series blog, https://sweeneysblog.com/2019/07/18/future-blog-series/, and I think that a few of them are nearly ready to start writing. I feel like the Stuttering in Mainstream Media series is going to go on for a while longer too. I am really enjoying writing the blogs for the series at the minute and they seem to be going down quite well with readers. I think that the blogs are going to remain as one blog for a series at the start of the week and one singular log at the end of the week but that may change in the future depends on how the blogs are doing. I might start doing a blog in one series at the start of the week and then one for another series at the end of the week. This is not for definite it is just speculation at this point.
For the business as a whole, I have quite a few milestones left to hit for this year. I am extremely happy with how fast the page is growing at the minute and I do hope that we surpass 5,000 total views by the end of the year. The way that I see it is that the more the blog grows, the more chance that someone who needs help from the blogs will get the chance to read them. The blogs are designed to help people so the more people that read them the better. If you know anyone who you think the blogs would help or anyone who is interested in the blog tell them to have a look. It is always nice to have new people join the community.
I am hoping to launch the second half of the business in the near future. The second half of the business is going to be me going into different organisations and business and doing talks and courses on Stuttering, Stress and Mental Health. If any of you know a business that needs courses run on any of these topics let me know. I do not want to charge much for the course just enough to keep the page running and allow me to expand it in the future.
I believe that is everything that I wanted to cover in today’s blog. I wanted to be clean with everything that I have planned for the page so thats where the inspiration for today’s blog came from. If anyone has any questions or comments about any of my blogs then please get in touch with me. You can get in touch through the comments on this post, through the contact page or even through our Facebook group, Sweeney’s Blogs!
Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoyed! Hope you all have a great week and remember to keep Highlighting the I in Difference!
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
Stuttering affects lots of different people in lots of different ways. One of the main factors to think of when it comes to stuttering is how people react to you. Teachers in school are there to support and mentor you so how do you react when one of them makes fun of your stutter? This is something that I have gone through and I will discuss it further in this blog.
Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!
Today’s blog is going to be the fourth blog in my Stuttering in Mainstream Media series and is going to focus on when I was picked on by a teacher in school for stuttering. I loved school and learning when I was younger and even though I encourage everyone to look at the positives all the time there are times when you need to look at the negatives to learn and develop from them. This blog is going to look at how a teacher picked on my stutter, how I reacted at the time and what we can learn from it.
The incident itself happened when I was in year 8 back in Secondary School. Me and my classmates in 8f were in a History lesson at the time. F was one of the top sets in the year. The class was close to the start of the year and our teacher asked us what we think we should learn about this year. Most of the class asked if we would learn about World War 2 or about Slavery and I would just sit and listen. I used to feel quite scared about speaking up in class due to my stutter but I finally thought I would give speaking a go.
I had been a big fan of reading encyclopaedias and history books at the time and had starting learning a lot about Oliver Cromwell. I had read all the books I had on him and didn’t understand the formal articles that were published online. I was really interested in his story however so decided to try and ask our teacher if we would be learning about him. Before I go further into the story I am not going to be mentioning the teachers name in theis blog as that is not the point of the blog, the point of the blog is to learn from my experience and how it affected me, it is not meant as an attack to the teacher in question.
I raised my hand and the teacher said my name. I started off asking the question, “Miss, do we get the chance to learn” when I just couldn’t get anymore words out. When I finally got the confidence to carry on every word I said was full of stutters, “abbbooout Oliver Cccrrrom Cromwell this year?” The question itself was easy to understand even though I stuttered a number of times. Instead of answering the question though the teacher decided to stop, make everyone quiet and then turned to speak to me.
She looked at me and said ” Jjjjames ssspeak prop-er-ly.” I just sat there staring at her in pure shock. I didn’t know how to react or what to do at the time. School was a place where I felt safe growing up and it is somewhere that I really enjoyed to be in. I couldn’t understand why someone in her position would make fun of me in front of the whole class. The rest of the class went completely silent too, no one knowing what to say or how to react.
This lesson was the very first lesson of the day. I didn’t speak again until lunchtime that day, around 4 hours after the lesson happened. No one really noticed that I wasn’t speaking until we all went out to get lunch. I was with my mates on the yard when a boy from my class comes over and starts telling everyone about what happened in History. I didn’t say a word when he was telling the story, I just listened and stared in the distance. When he finished the story everyone just turned and looked at me.
I did not know what to do when the boy was telling the story. I did not know how I should have felt, what I should have done, who I should have spoken to, etc. it is why I just stared into the distance, I was lost. After the boy finished telling the story all of my friends looked the same. Some spoke to me like they felt sorry for me, one or two seemed like they had genuine empathy for me and then the rest just didn’t react, they just stood there thinking.
It was when two of my good friends, Zac and Dylan, found out that action was taken. Zac and Dylan had been my friends all the way through Primary and Secondary school. They understood the affect that my stutter had on me and that making fun of it or joking about it was not okay. As soon as they found out what happened they came over to see if I was alright and if there was anything they could do.
Aftr speaking to me they went to see our Head of Year to make a complaint against the teacher, something I didn’t know they were going to do at the time. If Zac and Dylan take action there and then then I do not think that anything would have been done about it and I feel like I wouldn’t have gotten over this incident. In their own rights they can be classed as stutterspirations as they took action to help me, a person with a stutter out, when no one asked them too, they simply did it off their own backs. Even though they may not know it but they did a great thing that went a long way to helping me control my stutter.
As lunchtime break ended on that day everyone went back inside ready for afternoon registration. As I was walking back towards my class my Head of Year called me into her office. She informed me that Zac and Dylan came to her with a complaint against my history teacher and they told her what happened. She sat me down and asked me to go through my side of the story.
I took a set in her office and slowly explained everything that happened from the start of the day up to now and how it made me feel. She sat there listening making notes on a notepad. I stopped a few times when telling the story due to stuttering or when I would get a bit emotional going through it. It was at this point that the reality of what actually happened dawned on me.
After we finished discussing what happened she asked if I wanted to go home or if I wanted to stay in school. I said that I want to stay in school as there is only one lesson left in the day and do not want to fall behind on work. She then asked me if I want to make a complaint against the teacher or if I want to swap classes to be taught by a different history. I thanked her for both offers but refused them both. I would stay in the class, to prove to myself that I was strong enough and that I couldn’t be broken by one person.
It took me a while to get back to normal after that day. It took me around two to three days to start answering questions in class again and then around a week or so to start asking questions again. I was lucky that I was a fast learner at the time and that I understood the topics we were studying as I am the type of person that usually has a lot of questions about the work we are doing.
I decided against telling my parents what happened at first. I cannot remember exactly why i decided not to tell them but I think that I thought that if no one spoke about it then it would be forgotten about and then I could move on in some way. They eventually found out through a friend of mines mum at a football game on the following Saturday and then I filled them in on everything that had happened.
My mother decided to write a letter to the school voicing her concerns over the matter and then went in to have a meeting with the headmaster. During the following tutorial session on Monday morning I was called out of my class to go to the headmasters office. When I got there he asked me to sit down and tell him what happened from start to finish so I did. As I was talking through what happened he was just sitting there listening, nodding, trying to understand what happened and how to handle it.
After I had told him everything he got a fellow student to go and get the teacher from her class. When she came into his office, I started shaking, dreading what was going to happen next. He then asked me to repeat everything that I had just told him in front of the teacher. I started telling the story again, looking at her reaction every so often to she how she would react. As soon as I finished the story I closed my eyes for a few seconds to stop myself from breaking down and then turned to see what was going to happen.
Our headteacher made the teacher apologise to me and then he asked her to go back to her class. After she left the room he asked me if I was alright and if I wanted to go home. i said that I would stay in school thank you but I just need a few minutes to pick myself back up and then I would be find to go back to lessons. He nodded and agreed and told me that if I felt like I needed to leave any class for a few minutes then it would be more than fine and he would inform my other teachers on what had happened.
That is the story of how a teacher picked on me in front of the whole class back in Secondary school. I have never told the story to anyone since leaving school so it was quite nice to finally air it out and explain what actually happened. We can learn quite a lot from the story, even though it seems very negative and bleak there are a few interesting lessons we can take from it.
Firstly speaking out is very important. I was too scared to speak out about what happned at first but was very lucky that my good friends Zac and Dylan were there to do it for me. Speaking out takes a lot of courage but it is the only way that change will ever happen. We can’t just sit around and wait for change to happen, if we think something is wrong we have t speak up and try and make a change for the better. Speaking out seems like a very basic and easy thing but it can be one of the hardest things you can do. People usually don’t understand things unless you explain it to them.
Taking action is very important. Always try and take action yourself and if you see someone in trouble then try to help them out. Be the person that Zac and Dylan were for me. They saw that I was struggling and they stepped in. Always try your best to help people out, you never know they might return the favour in the future.
Secondly you can always pick yourself back up. After the teacher made fun of me I thought that I would never be able to speak in front of people again. It shook me to my core that someone in a position such as a teacher would pick on me in front of my whole class. It took me a while to understand that if I didn’t speak in class again then the only person it would impact on would be myself and I couldn’t let myself down because of someone else’s mistake.
That is all I want to talk about in today’s blog! I know today’s blog was a bit longer than what I usually do but I think it is important to go through the story and talk about how it affected me and how you can pick yourself back up again after someone knocks you down. What do you all think? Did you enjoy reading today’s blog? Have you got any stuttering stories you want to share? What do you think of what the teacher did? How would you react if it happened to you? Let me know your answers to the questions and any other thoughts you had on the blog in the comments or get in touch with me through the Sweeney’s Blogs Facebook page.
Thanks for reading and I hope you all enjoyed! Remember keep Highlighting the I in Difference!
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
Today’s blog is going to act as an update blog focused around the future of different series on this page. I think that it is good to present a few of the ideas I have now and see if anyone wants them to become a series in the future or not. The ideas listed in this blog are not all of my ideas merely some of them but if you have an idea yourself for a series then please get in touch and we’ll discuss it further!
I have had one or two questions lately regarding the Looking Into Male Mental Health series. I do have every intention to bring the series back, I just need a bit of time to plan where the series was going. the last thing that I want to do is rush the blogs as that takes the care and sentiment away from them. As to when the series will come back, I am not 100% sure yet. I might bring the series back after the Stuttering in Mainstream Media series or maybe at a later date. When the series comes back is down to a few factors. If people really want to see the series return then it will come back sooner, if the Stuttering in Mainstream Media series does not go down very well then it’ll come back sooner and if I get a lot of messages regarding the series then I will bring it back sooner!
One series that I’ve wanted to do for a while is Into the Mind of a Bully. I feel like it would be quite a good series to run as it will encompass both personal experiences alongside factual evidence. The series will start off by talking about the most common reasons for bullying then will take a deeper look into it. I have had a lot of experience in regards to being bullied in my life so I think that I can portray a very real story.
Another potential series that I can run is one based off of Respect. Respect is a topic that is often refrained from talking about by most people but I think it could make quite a good series. We can take a look at the modern world and see what respect is nowadays and if there is still a divide between different social groups. I feel like this series can have a lot of different contrasting views and will make for some good discussions in the comments.
A sadder more emotional series that I could run would be called Watching them Fade Away. This series will look at the progression of Alzheimer’s and Dementia and how you are watching a loved one slowly fade away from in front of your very eyes. As mentioned previously it would be a sadder series but I feel like it would be a very informative one and will help deliver a strong message.
I am also thinking about possibly running a few series based off of University Students. There are quite a few series I could run off this topic such as student burnout and what university is actually like for a student. I believe these series will be good to take a look into student life and to show people that it is not always as easy as some people assume. This series will be quite fun to write as it will allow me to perform self-evaluation whilst writing it.
The last series that I want to talk about in today’s blog is all about the Self Hate Cycle. I have talked about the Self Hate Cycle in a previous blog in my Looking into Male Mental Health series but feel like it would be an excellent topic to write a series on. As discussed in the blog, https://sweeneysblog.com/2019/06/11/looking-into-male-mental-health-blog-9-personal-experience-2/, the self-hate cycle is quite dark and bleak however there are ways to break out of it. I believe that if I were to run a series on it then I could balance out some of the negatives with the positives and show that if you are in this cycle there is always a way out, no matter how hard and long it may seem.
Thank you for reading today’s blog! What series would you like to see in the future? Are there any series that you want to see return? Are there any series that you are not a fan of and don’t want me to write? Do you have any ideas that you think would make a good series or even an individual blog? Let me know what you think of the blog and your answer to the questions in the comments below!
Thank you all for reading and I hope you have a great weekend! Remeber keep Highlighting the I in Difference!
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
Stuttering, a monumental topic that is often not given the attention it deserves. Many people know people who have a stutter but they really research into what a stutter is and how it can impact someone’s life. This series is going to delve into the world of stutters and reveal another side to the common condition.
Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!
Today’s blog is going to be the first blog in the new series, Stuttering in Mainstream Media. This series is going to really take a look at how a stutter can impact a person’s life, how it is covered in Mainstream Media and how we as a society can take a look at stutters in a new light. One of the biggest questions that arise when looking at stutters and stammers is what really is a stutter?
When it comes to looking at what a stutter really is, there are lots of different possibilities. The NHS,https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stammering/, break down stuttering/stammering into 3 different definitions. The first definition for a stutter is when “your repeat sounds or syllables” of a word. This is usually the most common definition for a stutter and is usually the one that has the most impact on your life.
The second definition the NHS provide is when you “make sounds longer”. An example of this can be with the word, please. People who do not have a stutter will say the word please, simply as the word, please. People who have a stutter, however, tend to extend parts of the word so it can end up sounding like pppppplease. It is usually harder to identify people who stutter this way.
The last definition that we are going to cover in this blog is when “a word gets stuck or doesn’t come out at all”. This type of stuttering is the one that I found hardest to learn to live with. It is one that isn’t usually talked about even though it can lead to a severe decrease in a persons self-confidence and in some cases can lead to people isolating themselves.
As you can see from the three definitions above stuttering/stammering comes in many different forms. There is a common misconception that stuttering does not have much of an effect on people which is something that I am aiming to change. The main objective of this series is to raise awareness into what stutters actually are, to talk about my own experiences about living with a stutter and then to bring in how stutters are covered in the media, on talent shows and in society in general.
That’s all I want to talk about in today’s blog! I hope you’re all looking forward to the blogs in this series as much as I am. Do you have any questions about stuttering that you want answers too? Have you ever had a stutter? Do you know anyone who has a stutter? How has it affected them? Are there any famous people you know who have a stutter? Let me know what you think in the comments or via our Facebook page.
Thank you all for reading today’s blog! I want to say a massive thank you to everyone too as we have now reached over 100 likes on the pages Facebook page. Hope you all have a great week and I’ll see you in the next blog!
Sweeney’s Blogs
Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!
Sweeney's Blogs 