Travis Althouse: Finding your Voice

I'm a parent of two boys who stutter.

And so you can imagine me watching them go through teenage years and knowing the struggles that they're gonna have.

And this is before I became educated.

uh, or more educated on stuttering therapy and what not to do and, and, and such.

So I, I, I, I had learned to manage my stutter pretty well with ways that I do it, but everybody has different ways how they manage their own stutter.

And so I, I did it wrong because, um, trying to get them to do certain things.

Um, but I, I, um, I'm sorry, I wasn't sure where, I just took myself back to those years.

That was pretty tough.

And I mean, we often assume our children will have similar experiences, but just because we had a tough time in school growing up with stutter doesn't mean that they will.

There was one dude in some of my classes back in high school.

He also stuttered.

And man, he was so open to talking and it seemed like it didn't bother him at all.

And so he, I don't know where he's at now, but if he's got kids, he's probably thinking, Oh, yeah, well, it's not ideal if they stutter, but it's just a stutter versus you or me, who it impacted all of our life.

So, yeah, just because we struggled doesn't mean that another stutterer will as well.

I like to say nothing is either good or bad.

It's our thinking that makes it so.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, yeah, I agree.

Yeah,

that's a great quote.

Our thoughts can be our own worst enemy.

Quick audible question here.

This 80% of young people who stutter seem to self-cure before a certain age.

Has there been any research on what, what impacts that 80%? Why 20% don't? And is there any early intervention that can be done there at that moment? Or is it self Ealing sort of.

Yeah.