commentr/StutterJuly 12, 2025

Content

So I was your daughter when I was a kid as well. Went to loads of speech therapy but I rarely, if ever, used the techniques they taught me to use outside of sessions. Unlike your daughter I was dreadfully silent until I was about 16. Perhaps just a me-thing though. Now as an adult, I've come to see speech therapy in a fairly negative light that not everyone agrees with. The methods in which they were taught to me were done in a way that felt patronising to me, and I felt I was treated like I couldn't form words at all when I could, I was just stuck. And I didn't like it. Because of this I really resented speech therapy. That and the last bit of therapy I actually had was really odd. I won't name them cos I bet it helps loads of people but for me personally, the way they wanted us to speak actually drew more attention to the way I spoke than actual stammering did. And I had a pretty bad stammer as a kid, so I won't take the severity of it as any reasoning. Later in my life I found speech therapy to actually talk about my mental health more fulfilling, rather than trying to teach fluency. It's possible your daughter feels similar? It's great that she's got confidence and it doesn't seem like it affects her ability to make friends. I think from my perspective, as a kid who's parents shoved them into literally any speech therapy to 'fix' me (not that I am saying that's what's happening here), I wouldn't be too concerned or badger her too much about using techniques from speech therapy. She will do whatever she needs to feel comfortable, and sometimes, like me, that was just kind of existing in my stammer for a while without being in my hometown or around my parents. That's when it really started to turn around for me.

Themes

Therapy & ProfessionalEmotional Experience

Subthemes

Therapy ExperiencesUnhelpful Therapy TechniquesHelplessness & Agency