Why Do People Stutter Or Stammer?

As I grew up from a young boy to a man I had something shackling me. It was stopping me from fulfilling my potential, it was eroding my self-confidence and my self-esteem and to put it quite bluntly it was ruining my life. I had a stutter and boy did it frustrate the hell out of me.

At the age of fifteen I had had a particularly bad day at school and when I arrived back home I had the following conversation with my mother:

"Mom I have just about had enough. I could hardly say a word today in the French lesson - people were laughing at me - it was just so embarrassing."

"Steve, I am not sure what to suggest. You have been attending different forms of speech and language therapy for the last eleven years but it does not seem to be working."

"I know mum - I have tried my best but they just have no idea as to what life is like for people who have a stutter or stammer. The question that I have is why I do people stutter?"

"That is a great question Steve and is one that I will look into."

My mum found out the following:

1. A young child can pick it up from a family member or family friend that has a stutter.
2. It can develop due to a shock reaction.
3. Some people believe it can develop due to your genetic make up.
4. People start to stutter after being abused.

This still did not help me to understand why I had a stutter as I did not fit into any of these categories! I will add a number five - being overtly shy as a child and not wanting to speak or socialise for whatever reason.

Steve Hill is a stuttering therapy coach from the UK, he runs a one to one stuttering course to help people to achieve fluency.