BY: WILLIAM BROWNING
“How was your day?”
I ask this question almost every afternoon after picking my 4-year-old son up from daycare. But one day not long ago, my son tried to respond with something other than his typical, “Good,” which always brightens my day.
Instead, a sound that began with a hard “J” and bent into a soft “A” emerged from his mouth, then abruptly stopped. It happened again, with more force, with the same clipped ending. He tried again and again — “Jjah…Jjah…Jjah” — until he finally said, “I can’t say it.”
“Yes, you can,” I said, but he only stared through the backseat window. The silence put a lump in my throat.
The same thing happened a week or so later — the first syllable of his response to my usual question stuck in his mouth and refused to turn off. This time it was a “D” sound, wobbling slightly into a “J.” I always glance over my shoulder when I ask about his day, to see his eyes — the light green, perfect eyes of my only child — but this time they were squinched shut, and his tiny hands were waving. Experiences like these would probably not concern most parents. For me, though, they lanced old scars, causing me to fight back tears.
I am a 45-year-old man who stutters. My stutter does not involve repetitive sounds, but rather “blocks,” the inability to produce the sound of a specific syllable, and the sudden, uncontrollable extension of some sounds for varying lengths of time. These impediments to perfect speech are sometimes accompanied by involuntary winces and head movements that amount to coordinated efforts aimed at dislodging the sound. So when I asked my son about his day and his responses involved sounds his mouth could not control, as well as physical efforts to gain control, I was overwhelmed by that feeling parents dread most — helplessness over their child’s experiences in the world.
I need to be clear that it was not my son exhibiting signs of a stutter that upset me. Disfluency is common in childhood. What hurt was the shame and embarrassment I sensed in his quietness (he is typically such a loud and rambunctious child) and in his eyes, which held more self-conscious hesitancy than passion.
That’s what I could not take — the thought of his self-esteem faltering because his mouth can’t immediately produce the sounds his brain wants. Only recently, in the last few years, have I come into a peace with my stutter, but it took decades to arrive there.
I know how painful a stutter can be. I also know how inconsequential it actually is.
***
Though I have stuttered as long as I can remember, my stutter began taking the shape of despair early in my teenage years, that stretch of life when social interactions define us. Snickers at a party when I struggled to introduce myself. Telephone lines going blank in response to my extended silences. The exasperation of so many teachers, clerks, and bosses whose work was slowed by my blocks. The one time I mentioned the difficulties of a stutter to a family member, they responded, “Stop trying to make a martyr of yourself.” I accumulated piles of such memories, and most interactions took on the sensation of a noose growing tighter around my neck.
At some point, I realized I could avoid my anxieties by giving myself permission to hide. If the answer to a question might cause a block, I’d answer with words that caused no trouble, regardless of whether they were true. I remember being asked by a teacher how many questions I answered correctly on a pop quiz. I responded 5, despite the truth being 7, worrying that the “S” sound might become uncontrollable in my mouth. At restaurants, I routinely ordered what I did not want out of fear that ordering what I actually wanted might cause a stammer and facial distortion.
But test scores and menu choices are inconsequential. Relationships are what count, and I had no problem avoiding them in the same way. Even if I was physically present, the real me was often hiding. I became comfortable swapping meaningful, truthful interactions for cursory, false exchanges. I avoided one barrier by placing a much more consequential one in my way.
Even if I was physically present, the real me was often hiding. I became comfortable swapping meaningful, truthful interactions for cursory, false exchanges.
That’s what stuttering feels like at its core: a barrier. Not between you and your words, but between you and other people. The hardest part is feeling like you are unable to present yourself as you are in every instance. We all want to be known. When my stutter is at its worst and I am at my most vulnerable, it feels like being robbed of my authenticity. Add to that a tendency to avoid certain words, even if they are the right words, and you slip into feeling perpetually unknown.
Because of shame over the way I spoke, I failed to fully embody my own existence.
And I do not want my son to struggle the way I do — or more precisely, the way I did.
***
The irony is that it was my son who helped me to stop worrying so much about my stutter. Through caring for him, I was finally able to accept the notion that numerous therapists had suggested for years: of all the things in life to fret over, sometimes speaking differently should not be one.
As I watch and listen to my son move through the various stages of speech development, I sometimes sense that he may have inherited my stutter. To keep from succumbing to fear, like I did that day on our way home from daycare, I remain purposeful with my thoughts and internal responses in the moment.
The irony is that it was my son who helped me to stop worrying so much about my stutter.
First, I tell myself that my son may not be stuttering at all. Like all children, he has worked through many matters of speech. What I hear as a stutter may be him working through another.
More importantly, I remind myself that my emotional responses to his disfluencies are mine and mine alone — meaning the sense of shame and embarrassment that surfaced on our way home from daycare that day had nothing to do with whatever was occurring in my son’s interior. He may have been annoyed at being unable to say what he meant, but he was only responding to the specifics of those moments. He is still learning what to make of his experiences. I was the one feeling shame and embarrassment, reverberations of my past trauma.
That’s where I try to help — by not allowing my experiences to shape or influence his experiences. When he exhibits signs of a stutter, I tell myself to keep his communication journey separate from mine.
It is an ongoing process and one that hasn’t yet stuck — each time my son displays disfluency, I must make a conscious decision to keep a clear space between us for his words and experiences. To do that, I remind myself that growing up with a stutter is hard. That allows me to see not only the childhood version of myself, but also my son, in all our vulnerability and strength. Then I can forgive myself and put that regret down, because he needs me.
When that shame has been allowed to leave, all that remains is my son, me, and the words between us.
In those moments, we are the people we are meant to be. And we understand each other perfectly.
BIO: William Browning is a journalist from Mississippi. He has written for various regional and national publications.
