2016-10-20 05:49:48 (edited by Chris 2016-10-20 05:51:05)

Hello all,

I thought I'd start a topic about stuttering. I have always had a stutter. When I was younger, it was very severe. I found t very difficult to get out sentences and communicate. Thanks to some excellent speech therapy lessons during High School, my stuttering is vastly decreased. It's not gone by any means, but I at least now know how to keep it to a manageable level.

With all that being said, does anyone else on here have a stutter or other speech impediment in addition to blindness? If not, that is fine. I just figured I'd throw this out here as I haven't found any topics like this on here.

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2016-10-20 22:12:56

Atlease allso happened with early speech synth versions sofare.

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2016-10-21 02:23:31

I've sort of had issues with it. I've heard some people studder and it sort of reflected on me and became a habit for me, I also studder sometimes when I can't finish a sentence or lost my train of thought, which trust me, happens a lot. I've been known to be very forgetful.

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2016-10-21 05:34:14

I dated someone who had a stutter for awhile. He often found it hard to get out sentences, particularly when he was stressed. What really used to piss me off was how impatient a lot of people would get when he couldn't finish a sentence. They would try to guess what he wanted to say, which made me want to punch some sense into them. I don't think they would like it very much if they were constantly being questioned about what word they wanted to say next. I get that they were trying to be helpful, but if it were me, I would find that anything but.

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2016-10-21 17:54:50

@turtlepower17, I understand that one. I've been subject to that myself. I suppose it goes back to people not knowing/understanding/caring about different types of disabilities.

What is post 2 supposed to mean? It just sounds like a bunch of gibberish.

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2016-10-21 18:57:27

I tend to not talk clearly and way to quickly sometimes, and teachers in school have to ask me to repeat stuff quite often. Also have a bit of a problem with letter r. It sounds normal with English, not with my language. Nothing major though.

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2016-10-23 03:27:36

I tend to like try to finish their sentences for them then I realize I'm being a dick by doing that. There was this guy at my school, he was sighted but had a stutter and he would always want to have me order his food for him like in the ala carte line and I wouldn't do it, I would tell him look dude, it sucks you have a stutter, but you gonna have this for the rest of your life and you are just gonna have to deal with it. I understand its like a confidence killer but don't worry about it, it isn't easy but I'm not gonna order your food for you because then you're not gonna learn how to deal with it.

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2016-10-23 07:50:26

I am quite fortunate to have not had gone through stuttering, and sometimes, I used to finish teacher's sentences when she though was not stuttering, couldn't finish her speech. Sometimes that is unfair but it is interesting that they appreciate when you help them with proper words or terms.
The only case when I would be considered stuttering was the time when I learnt to speak English fluently, but that, hopefully is gone.

2016-10-23 12:31:09

@Ironcross, while I understand your thinking, at the same time that's a really not good way of dealing with someone else's disability as Chris said.
How would you like it next time you lose your way in an area or drop an object and can't find it if some sighted person said to you "well I'm not going to help you because your blind and have to learn to deal with it"

While it is true that stuttering isin some cases possible to correct, that takes a professional who knows what she/he is doing, and if anything you'd make the situation worse, especially if lots of people are kewing and pressurizing the poor chap to speak and order his lunch.

Stuttering I don't find myself hard to deal with if I encounter people who stutter since mostly it's just a question of being patient and letting someone relax, however people with serious speech difficulties such as a cleft pallet have presented problems, since as I can't see their facial expression or gestures and can't make out their words I feel genuinely lost and sometimes worry I come across like a git if I ask them to repeat something since I've not heard it.

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2016-10-23 18:20:12

I'm usually stuttering when I'm losing concentration while trying to explain something, and then I miss words. This happens quite often to me, because I'm giving computer education and technical support to blind people in our blind association. For example, I'm trying to explain to absolute computer beginners who are usually more than 60 years old that desktop is like an entrance hole in the house, from where you can enter all other rooms. Your user folder is like a living room, where you can access your documents, music and pictures. In such situations, when I'm trying to be concentrated as best as I can in order to explain various computer terms to first-time PC users, I usually get stuck, I know what I meen but I don't know how to say it in that particular moment. That's where stuttering will happen in my situation.
People who don't speak my language will also notice if they ever talk to me via voice chat that I'm also stuttering a lot while trying to explain something in english, and it's even more often than in case of my native language, but ok that's also to be expected from non-english speaker.
I'm sure you will find stuttering and long pauses between words or phrases in any of my recordings where I didn't make sound editing afterwards. For example, here's recording that I've made recently in english. I made this recording just for fun to show how to make a bat sound with audacity. And I can notice both stuttering and long pauses between my words. Here it is:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/407 … _sound.ogg

2016-10-23 18:37:44

I know someone who has a speech delay..And because of my hearing loss, I tend to say a word wrong without realising it. For example, I used to lisp before I got new hearing aids that transposed the S sounds to a lower frequency.

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2016-10-24 02:33:53

I'm starting to wonder if my stutter is somehow connected with emotion. When I'm nervous or excited, it seems to be far worse. I've also entertained the idea that it may be caused in part by the fact that I was born premature. I wonder if something in the brain didn't quite form the way it should.

Regarding that recording, I don't really notice anything all that bad. Maybe a little pausing, which is what I have been taught to do in order to keep from locking up completely. The main issues I face are prolongated sounds like the "m" sound where I seem to get blocked and sit there going mmmmm for a few seconds. I also have part word repetitions where I get stuck on certain sounds like c c c in the word cold. Then there are the time where everything gets locked up and I can't produce any sound at all. Methinks it may be a glitch in the brain after all. I've managed to tame those down and now only seem to have regular trouble with "m". I honestly don't know.

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2016-10-25 16:49:40

I've been fortunate enough not to have a speech delay, although I know I could've easily had one because I was born so prematurely and I do have some mild learning processing disorders. However I know many people who do have a speech impediment of some kind. I'll describe one particular encounter here.
In middle school I found a cool friend who was sighted and who took an interest in me not only because I was blind, but also because I never had enough energy. We didn't share common interests but we always found some vibe that had us wanting to hang out. He was fascinated with me as a person, but something drew me to him as well. He had a mild stutter, which normally only existed on the S sound. HE often had trouble transitioning from an S to another vowel. Beyond that, his stutter was subtle or completely nonexistent. It often didn't show unless he was tense, or needing to give specific responses. When we were just hanging out, his stutter calmed down considerably.
One day in a class, we had a substitute teacher. We were reading sections of a text book, and she would rotate around the room, having each person read a paragraph or two aloud. I think a student could decline reading aloud if he or she didn't want to, but I'm not certain. When she got to my friend with a stutter, he tried his best to read quickly. But his consonants were thick, and he'd get stuck around them. Every single time he got stuck, she would, with next to no hesitation, say the word he was having trouble with, as if impatiently pushing him to move on. As he fought through the text, her interjections came quicker and more swiftly, to the point where he had hardly a moment to breathe before she would drag him forward. I got the impression she knew he had a stutter before he even started reading, and this made her either uncomfortable, empathetic, or impatient. I couldn't figure it out. Even worse, I was little more than a few feet away from him. I knew I'd be up soon.
When I read aloud, she didn't give me much time for pause either. I didn't have a stutter, but I wasn't the fastest braille reader either. I read at a comfortably slow speaking pace, the pace that narrators often use in audio books. The substitute was pushing me along as well in some spots.
A few minutes later when class was over, all I heard about was how the poor kid with a stutter wasn't given any time to work things out on his own. "She didn't even let him finish his words," one of our friends observed. But him and I both remained silent. I later asked him how he felt about it, and he blew it off. Perhaps he didn't want to talk about it, or he was so used to it that he just wanted to get it done and move on.
This experience got me thinking. Was the teacher doing the right thing by keeping him from getting caught up in his speech impediment, or should she have let him fight it out? Was the class doing the right thing by giving him all kinds of support after the fact? Being blind, I have to think about these things a fair bit concerning my own areas of weakness. In my own personal opinion, both strategies are not ideal.
what I normally do with blindness-related challenges is to sort of adopt a subconscious 3-second rule. If I spend more than 3 seconds stuck on something, making absolutely no progress, then I start to be open to the possibility of help. Of course 3 seconds isn't a constant, sometimes I'll want less time, sometimes far more, depending on the task and how independently I feel I can accomplish it. But for the average routine task, 3 seconds is a compromise that's worked well for me. Like I say, it's a subconscious thing that has a load of exceptions.
I suspect my friend at school could've benefitted from something like a 3-second system. He rarely needed more than that to break himself from a stutter, and thus I never felt a pang of intense empathy for him. I never saw him get so wound up that he couldn't say what he wanted to say. Whether he wanted people to be more or less helpful is something I don't know. But he never expressed a need for any additional support, and it irked me when people would assume he needed it.
This also brings to mind a story that my Grandma told me a few years ago about my uncle. Every time he would stutter, my grandma would reprimand him, and sometimes would resort to putting soap or pepper in his mouth. Fortunately he "grew out of it." As she proudly states, "The only reason he stopped was because he knew Nanna wasn't gonna let him do it. If you don't do that early on, kids are gonna grow up stuttering and talking like babies." That generation of thinking seems to suggest tough love can do no harm.
What is tough love? From what I've heard, tough love is when you adamantly show your compassion for someone's well-being by subjecting them to dramatic treatment, either physical or psychological, which you are sure will impact their state of mind to push it in a better place. This is just my opinion, but I am firmly opposed to that. Here's why.
Some people stutter just because of nerves and emotions. Others have a legit reason for doing it. I recently saw something on Medical Incredible about a guy who's stutter is speculated to occur because of the crossing of signals between the hemispheres of the brain, causing them to short-circuit. His stutter was so severe that when he was caught up in a stutter cycle, he couldn't break it until he ran out of breath. I think it would take a pretty cruel human being to say that had his parents washed his mouth out with soap enough, he would not be stuttering today. It would take a pretty non-empathetic person to assume that if he just "tried not to stutter," or "just spoke more shamelessly," that it would go away. Thankfully that attitude isn't popular among this generation of people. But what still is popular is the attitude that people with disabilities either want or need constant help or support. Then we have the disabled people who flat-out refuse any help. I've seen blind people in particular who firmly believe that blindness is something to be minimized as much as possible, and failing to minimize its effects makes you helpless. It saddens me. The only reason independence is such a big issue among disabled people is that society has made it that way. It stems from societal ignorance of disabilities. I could really rant for ages about this but I would rather spare us all the trouble.
All I'll say is that if you want to help someone with a disability, just treat them like you would treat anyone else. The conversations could potentially be about different topics, but the dynamic should be natural, spontaneous, and full of a relationship between two or more people who actually feel some sort of connection to each other. Treating them as if they are just another friend is something they will appreciate. It's not wrong to talk about challenges which disabilities present, but sensitivity to each other's feelings comes first. Unfortunately I doubt we'll ever get to a point of complete integration. I'm always going to feel special and different just because that's how people with disabilities are often viewed. I think if we were more broad-minded individuals, more willing to talk things out in sensitive but open ways and can avoid pre-judgment, then we would go a very, very long way.

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2016-10-25 21:12:32

@Dark the thing is, he will most likely have that issue his whole life, anyone with a disability needs to know how to work through their issues. When I was 13, I moved in with my dad after having fights with my mom and stuff for 2 years for trying to restrict me due to my vision. He taught me to cook, do laundry and insisted that I do these things for myself. I'm glad he did because when I moved up to college, even those sighted people could barely cook, didn't know how to use the washing machines / dryers, etc. You need to do all you can to be independent, and only if you have tried and exhausted all resources you have should you ask for help. There is no shame in asking for help, but you will have no self confidence if you ask for help all the time. You will feel the shame in it even if there is no shame to be felt. But, if you do all you can to work things out for yourself, and seldom need to ask for help, when you do, there is no shame to be felt and you will say well, OK I did have to ask for help with this, but look at all this other stuff I can do for myself.

That kid with the stutter needed to learn that he can't control his speech impediment and that he just needs to go through his life without letting it vastly affect him. If he could stop stuttering, he would have done it, he didn't like the fact that he stuttered, and he would want to correct the problem, so that tells me it is beyond his control. But, that doesn't excuse the fact that he had a life  to live and that speaking is p part of that process. By refusing to order his food for him, I was attempting to teach him to minimize the shame or guilt or whatever else he was feeling due to his speech impediment. He could not fix it, he could only live with it.

As for if I drop something, and have a sighted person tell me to find it myself, well I'd probably slug them for being an ass, then buy them a drink for understanding that I want to be treated like anyone else.

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2016-10-27 19:46:16

well, actually i don't have any speech delays or stuttering and stuff like tht, but still i can't seem to talk effectively at all when it comes to getting into a conversation with outsiders specially strangers. when it comes to aproaching others for help specially when people are at a distance, i admit it is one of my worst weaknesses. the problem is, i couldn't find any solution to this, because of that there are very few peopl who are in touch either colege or anywhere outside. also one of my tendency is to avoid bothering people unless it is absolutely neccessary and as a result suppose  if someon  starts a conversation, or i start a conversation with someone i don't really know, it doesn't last more than a few seconds. but al that shold be for another topic, even if my condition used to be much much worse a few years ago. although interestingly enough since last few months there is some major improvement, partly because of me starting to use a cane while moving outside and trying to get the hang of the layout of the campus etc by relying less on others. truly enough, it seems some things can only be learnt after trying on ones own.

actually i didn't want to intrude on this topic like this. keep it going though guyss

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