By What follows is a deeply personal series of posts for National Stuttering Awareness Week describing my ongoing adjustment to parenting a son who stutters. Publicly sharing my experience is part of my effort to process this seldom discussed phase in the through life stuttering journey and an attempt to spotlight mental health awareness month, which is appropriately held in May as well. Writing in this way has been cathartic, a means of feeling less alone, and a bridge to a place where I can begin to feel better. From this first post, you will feel what I have felt for the last few months but know that I have the support I need, and, with each day, I am showing up with the resilience that got me through my past. There will be a progression to hope by the end of the series, though I will not gloss over any of the parts of in between. Thank you for walking the journey alongside me.
Before reading, please take a moment to find and listen to Garth Stevenson’s song, titled “The Southern Sea” (Spotify or YouTube). It has a beautiful tenor and tone that sets the stage to fully feel the emotions of what I am about to share. If the song brings you to tears, then you have a sense of my struggle, as I have wept inside and out, in both despair and hope, for the last several months.
Often, in the dark times of my life, I have turned to music as a loyal shoulder. When I find a song that strikes the right emotive chord of my inner life, it plays on repeat. And many of them are without words, instrumentals that flow with the waves of emotion that come with the steps backwards and forwards of embracing my stutter.
This season has felt like I’m in a never-ending malaise, as it was for most of my formative years. But this time, I’m constantly teetering on the cusp of consciousness fighting between the two equal desires of wanting to numb it out as I did as a child and staying present to feel it for what it is. For all intents and purposes, I’m thriving, I’m successful at work, I’m a committed husband, and a dedicated father—I’ve fought hard, really freaking hard to build this life.
My son’s stutter.
His stutter has become my struggle, and it’s been hard to garner the strength to pull myself up and out of the hole this time.
I have written before about the rollercoaster ride of his stuttering pattern since it began as he neared three-years-old. His stutter has taken the form of every pattern imaginable, from those that I’ve seen, heard, observed, and experienced myself. Now at just over four-and-a-half-years-old, it’s different.
Experiencing it as a father who stutters is a significant part of the difference because my once-shed hypervigilance has returned, and has taken up the sight, sound, and processing of his stutter. It is unlike anything I’ve felt before—the fuel for the malaise.
The difference for my son is the settling in of secondary behaviors. His frantic casting of his gaze. The word substitution and disjointed sentences. The false starts and abrupt stops on words in which he knows he’ll struggle. The slight head jerks and squinting of his eyes to get out a word. And the look on his face when I meet his eyes and hold contact—he knows what he’s doing and that something just isn’t right.
It absolutely destroys me inside. My mind and body try to protect me by taking me away from the piercing pain that these moments inflict. It is like there is a switch inside flipping on when the pain reaches the threshold set in my childhood, but then an opposing finger is there to turn it off to keep me there with him, for him. I’m always wrestling with how much can I bear before I fold?
The toll has become all-consuming, but I’m refusing to fold. I’m fighting, with every ounce of my being, to hold it together for him. I must, there is no choice.
Staying present and holding space for his stutter exacts a toll that follows me all throughout my days. I think about him all the time. I wonder how he’s getting along at daycare. I pick him up afterwards, he greets me with a big hug, and we go over his day on the way home and into our house, as he unleashes his words with a joy that should be powerful enough to overwhelm the malaise. Until my wife closes his bedroom door as he goes to sleep, we’re in it right there with him listening to his imaginative stories and as he talks our ears off while stuttering away.
At work, his stutter has become my struggle. Psychologically it has embodied my stuttering pattern causing me to think twice again about the words I want to come out of my mouth. It’s mind blowing. I’m struggling on words and sounds that I never have before. I’m preoccupied with warding off the once tamed spiraling thoughts. The physical exhaustion of doing so while going about my day has overwhelmingly returned. It’s inescapable.
What’s most concerning to me have been the panic attacks. I didn’t know that’s what was happening when I would find myself short of breath. Surely I had them as a kid battling my own stuttering experience, but I haven’t a memory of them. There have been several days over the last few months where I’ve sat immobilized in my office, struggling to catch my breath, and weathering the bottled-up anxiety even though all I had been doing was sitting by myself doing work. And yet I have to go about my day and bury this struggle to perform at a high enough level so no one can tell I’m on the brink.
Typically, there is a ‘but’ or a ‘however’ here to up-turn the story to a positive trajectory. There isn’t, right now at least, and I feel more alone than I have in years. I should be okay but I’m not.
Every Waking Moment 
I remember when my son began stuttering and how his stuttering set up camp in my brain and my heart. For months, I could focus little else. Reading your post takes me back to his early childhood–immediately–his little kid buzz cut, the outfits he wore, our pre-renovation kitchen, all those visuals and viscerals–I’m back there after reading here today and looking forward to reading what’s to come in your story as this week progresses.
LikeLike