That…is…Abuse: Parental Accountability with Stuttering

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I was aware of the implications when I said it. I paused, and thought, “No way, is it?…Yes…it is.” 

Abuse.

A word that I have not considered when it comes to childhood stuttering, but similar themes have been swirling in my head since walking alongside my son who stutters for the last two years. I am no stranger to the stories of parents trying to fix their child’s stutter, and the ends of the earth they pursue to prevent what they anticipate will be a challenging future. But I don’t believe in coincidences, particularly with this recent story I heard. 

“You have three tries to say it fluently,” as a mother said to her young son.

I don’t want to know what the “or else” is in this parent-child exchange. What I do know, though, is that young boy is going to carry that directive with him for the rest of his life. And that has kept me up at night, and only the thought of it has stopped me dead in my tracks at random times during my days since I heard it. 

When we talk about and laud “trauma-informed” care for stuttering, this is the epitome of what we are trying to prevent. We can be all for changing the approach to healing stuttering and being allies and trauma-informing care, but we have to call this what it is—abuse. 

When a child is physically abused, the police and child protective services get involved. Heck, even when a child is psychologically abused directly or through domestic violence, adults step in to save them and provide them the support to hopefully stunt the settling in of long-term symptoms of trauma. Why are we so slow to act in a similar way for kids being badgered to talk fluently when we know that approach, for most, will haunt them, forever?

The moment I heard this shared by the child’s therapist in exasperation and who was seeking guidance from other therapists, I didn’t contain my emotions well but the substance of my response stands. “This is not the 1980s or 1990s…this is the information age, with all the knowledge about stuttering available at your fingertips…there is no excuse anymore,” I said, in what I felt as an out-of-body experience because I immediately was cast back to the clinical chambers where I endured similar directives. 

To her credit, the therapist filled in some of the details about the child’s parents and home life that inferred exposure to other potentially more serious trauma. And I am by no means faulting the therapist. The thing I’m conflicted about is the parents agreed in some way to bring the child to the therapist for help. [I wrote and deleted the next sentence ten times because I’m struggling to believe it…] This is not an extreme instance of abuse of a child who stutters. Unfortunately, it is all too common. 

Accountability is what I’ve been wrestling with. I’m not litigating the proliferation or utility of fluency shaping therapy—that horse is dead and my anger shed. Here is how I’m considering with whom to hold accountable:

• Do No Harm: When parents take their children to the doctors to get medicine for an illness or care for an injury, they expect to receive treatment. And if they don’t get it, they search to find a doctor who will help their child heal. The problem with stuttering is still not too many people know what to do with it. Again, the information age. Dr. Google is there for anxious parents to self-diagnose illnesses and injuries to determine if a visit to the doctor is necessary or to make sense of what is happening. Here is a novel idea, maybe use Dr. Google to understand what stuttering is, the through-life impact, and the consequences of what help—if at all—you decide to seek for your child. Explore all sides, and, as a human, if it doesn’t make sense to you, i.e., telling your child the way they talk is wrong, keep exploring, and see what other parents are doing. Just do no harm.

• See Something, Say Something: We are a more trauma-informed culture than at any point in human history. If you see a despairing child crumbling under any kind of verbal or—hopefully not—physical abuse, you have an obligation to protect them. This isn’t even one of those dire situations, where your body compels you to act. It is pernicious, and you may not even recognize it at first, but the badgering of a child on a daily basis to talk the way you and everyone else talks is repetitively experienced trauma that probably will lead to what is known as complex post-traumatic stress disorder. The kind of trauma that flies under the radar and will haunt the child in perpetuity. I’m not going to be complicit and sit by and watch anymore. When I see abuse, I’ll call it abuse. 

• Formative Development: This quote from Dr. Bruce Perry, renowned childhood trauma psychologist, says it all, “Children don’t outgrow the effects of early experiences; trauma is trapped in time…our brains are sculpted by them.” One…two…three…will reverberate through every opportunity to stutter going forward for this child, whether he knows it or subconsciously. We shape our children and how they react to external stimuli. 

• You Cannot Save Them All: But he doesn’t even have a chance! The urgency to buffer the blows runs viscerally through my veins, still months after I heard this story. I feel helpless, as I imagine the therapist does too.

• Parents: I struggle to place responsibility with the parents as I live through the whirlwind of becoming accustomed to my son finding his stuttering voice while I initially looked on helplessly. What if I hadn’t stuttered for 35 years and knew nothing about the deep roots of avoidance, shame, and trauma? There would be a frantic search for help. The default would be speech therapy, with maybe a lesser likelihood of the ‘fix-it’ approach than what I experienced? Even still, the parental freak out remains a raw wound, and with healing has given grace to the moms and dads being exposed to stuttering for the first time by their child’s struggled speech. And yet, I accept full responsibility for how my son learns to live collaboratively with his stutter—ownership.

• Resources to Learn About Stuttering: This challenges my above Dr. Google theory. When you do Google “stuttering,” you get an AI-generated summary, which is not far from an accurate account. However, what follows are the websites for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Mayo Clinic, Stuttering Foundation, and Cleveland Clinic, along with advice to consult your medical doctor and John Hopkin’s telling me that stuttering is a speech problem. Presented with these options, a parent amid the heat of emotions is likely to go to the dark corner and be even less certain of what they are supposed to do. I would hope most parents don’t give up there. A parent without an immediate “in” to the stuttering community and its power to pull others into its supportive culture will likely do unintentional harm to their child if left to figure it out on their own.  

• Speech Therapists: The first-line of defense—speech therapists are the most likely touchpoint for a parent in distress seeking to help their child. “I don’t care what you do, just fix this,” is what therapists often share that parents say, and it usually comes as a directive and not with a “please.” I will not minimize the pressure, tone, and difficulty therapists face in dealing with parents who don’t understand stuttering. Some and, I hate to say it, many speech therapists don’t understand stuttering or their case loads are too full or they haven’t been exposed enough to people who stutter. But, the profession upholds certifications, continuing education, and the writ to do no harm. As much blame as one could foist upon therapists, the system of therapy for stuttering is trending in a better direction and more therapists are learning about stuttering in ways previously thought impossible. That said, no child should be left behind and the evolution of needs for children who stutter extend beyond the sight and sound of their spoken words. My belief is that therapy for childhood stuttering will go the route of trauma prevention, meaning that therapists will largely work with parents instead of their kids to help create a family and home environment where stuttering is accepted, given space, and empowers social fluency. In other words, the therapy will be for parents and caregivers, until or if the child needs therapeutic support. 

• Answer the Call: When you talk to adults who stutter that have contemplated their experiences, particularly those who had speech therapy in childhood, you will find a common response when talking about their parents’ efforts to help them, “they did the best they could with what they had.” For me, that is a new trigger phrase that I have heard for years in the stuttering community but, now, it is suddenly everywhere I turn. There is an underlying resignation in these words of forgiveness, which, I, too, have uttered myself. I don’t hate my parents for how they sought the help that was available to them…in the 1990s. We, as people who stutter, need to not be okay with the next generation still uttering this phrase as they grab the reins to take back their lives from stuttering as adults. Share your stories. Volunteer at stuttering community events. Mentor therapists seeking to learn about our experiences. Make your voice heard, with the stuttering in it. Only a small fraction of adults who have healed enough have reached their hands back to pull others forward. It’s time to answer the call.

Having lived both sides of the aisle, I am more convinced than ever that the parent-child relationship and the home environment is the primary focus for building a foundation for self-acceptance in a child who stutters. When a child is overwhelmed within these contexts, the primary focus should not be on their speech but rather on efforts to alleviate the barriers to healthy development and acceptance. 

And the reality is, speech therapists are not equipped to tackle this challenge on their own. They can’t solve intergenerational trauma, as is the case in this example. They can’t monitor how the child is treated or badgered in the home. They can’t even hope to break through the barriers in what little time they have with the child. 

So, what can and should therapists do when they observe parental abuse? 

The answer is not to immediately dive into a confrontation that could worsen the child’s experience. Rather, therapists must be armed with the basic facts about the lived experience, know their therapeutic approach, and how they define therapy success. Knowledge is, indeed, power, and essential for therapists to confidently step in to defend and prevent further abuse. 

Recently, I partnered with an esteemed stuttering specialist to compile a list of questions for parents to ask prospective therapists as they choose one to work with their child. We have to support parents in this quest to find healthy holistic stuttering therapy. However, this particular example of abuse arose separately while we were making the list and it made me wonder why a similar list of questions for therapists doesn’t exist for these kinds of interactions with parents. I get that there are general approaches to “intake” but not necessarily for challenging interventions. After all, the question made the therapist who shared this example feel helpless; other therapists could certainly benefit from such an intervention-like strategy. 

The following chart shows the questions for parents seeking a therapist we devised next to a list of questions for therapists meeting with parents. These represent a place to start, an initial foundation for devising a strategy. 

Questions for Parents Seeking Therapist	Questions for Therapists Meeting Parents
What drew you to working with child who stutter? Do you have any personal experiences or stories that connected you to this field?	What made you pursue therapy at this point? How have you approached it thus far with your child and family at home?
How would you describe a typical session with a child who stutters? What kind of activities or discussions might take place?	How would you describe a typical day of communication with your child? Who do they most often interact with and how do their listeners respond?
Do you focus on the visible parts of stuttering, or do you help kids navigate the feelings and thoughts that might be ‘below the surface’? Which do you feel is more important to address in therapy?	Do you publicly or privately acknowledge your child’s stuttering moments to them? If so, is it to correct their fluency or to address their emotions, feelings, and thoughts associated with their stuttering? Which do you feel is more important to address in therapy?
Every child is unique, especially when it comes to stuttering. How would you adjust your methods to fit my child’s specific needs?	Every child responds differently to stuttering. How have you adjusted your parenting based on your child’s stuttering onset? Have you been consistent? Has anything been particularly challenging for you to process, such as their pattern variability or behavior?
What would meaningful and successful therapy outcomes be for my child?	What would meaningful and successful therapy outcomes be for you and your child?
What role do parents play in your treatment services?	What role do you expect to play in your child’s therapy?
	What have you learned about stuttering in children?

Bringing this full circle, friend and stuttering community leader, Dr. Ana Paula Mumy publicly shared her own experience as a mother of a son with Tourette’s. Her message is accountability. She wrote:

“Can the parent of a child with celiac disease demand that their child’s body be able to tolerate gluten? Can the parent of a child with cerebral palsy demand that their child not walk with a limp? Can the parent of a child with asthma demand that they not wheeze and experience difficulty breathing? Can the parent of a child with diabetes demand that their child’s body produce insulin? Answering yes to any of the above questions would be out of the question and potentially laughable, but why is it different when we consider, Can the parent of a child who stutters demand that their child stop stuttering?”

Ana Paula is by no means being insensitive to families that are struggling, acknowledging that a period of loss and grief when things aren’t the way we wanted, such as the onset of stuttering or the above afflictions. But she strongly posits, “Why are parents not being held accountable for the knowledge and guidance available to help them and their children come to terms with their stuttering in a way that is positive and life-altering?”

To drive home her point, Ana Paula recounted her journey alongside her son as they figured out Tourette’s together. She detailed how his pediatric neurologist educated her and her son about Tourette’s using drawings and child-friendly terms in a comforting way to ensure he knew he was going to be okay. There was still uncertainty, such as how his tics would evolve, and he would struggle with the accompanying ADD and OCD tendencies. However, when he faced challenges that he wasn’t equipped to handle on his own, there Ana Paula was, problem-solving with his doctor, teachers, and alongside him. “It was MY responsibility to learn everything I could, to respond appropriately to what I was learning, to initiate teacher conversations and help equip them, and to ensure that my son felt 100% valued and supported in the midst of his diagnoses,” she explained.

With patience, grace, and care, Ana Paula believes therapists must help bring parents gently to accountability. She points to our greater understanding of the neurophysiological aspects of stuttering, the toll of attempting to hide it, and the long-term implications of masking the inner side effects. Like the Dr. Google reference, she agrees—there is no shortage of information or resources to help parents navigate stuttering with their children. She concludes, “I believe we have an important role in getting them there, but it might require some difficult conversations, it might require us to step out of our comfort zones, and it might require some courage for the sake of the children we serve.”

So, who is to be held accountable for the unrealistic expectation of fluency that this specific child will carry as trauma for years?

The parents.

For all that’s up against them, they are not doing the best they can with what is now at their fingertips. Learn about what is afflicting your son and how you’re perpetuating it. Find a way to stop passing on your trauma to your child. And for god sakes, stop valuing fluency in a way that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

If you have made it this far, you can probably tell I’m not done trying to figure out a way to take on this challenge to prevent trauma from holding people who stutter back from living the lives they can only dream. I’m living mine, and they should be given every opportunity to do so as well.

Until then, please keep this child in your hearts, minds, and prayers.

And, as Ana Paula powerfully wrote, “…ultimately, as adults, for the sake of our children, [we] must find a way through to acceptance, healing, and empowerment so that we are not hurting or traumatizing our children.”



*The image above was generated by AI and does not depict the real mother and son.