postr/StutterJuly 27, 2025

Given your experiences growing up, do you wish you'd been homeschooled?

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Given your experiences growing up, do you wish you'd been homeschooled? I don't stutter but I have two wonderful little kids who do -- a 6.5-year-old boy and a 4.5-year-old girl. My son has been stuttering for 3+ years and we are finally signing up with a wonderful SLP whose primary focus is stuttering therapy, but she has said that he probably will stutter for life, and that the primary goal of therapy isn't to eliminate stuttering but to just reduce its severity and give him more tools as he grows up. But he is probably in the 1% of people who will stutter forever (as is my daughter, most likely). As a parent, I adore my children just as they are, but I am terrified that they are going to be bullied for their stutters. My son did a year of public kindergarten and absolutely loved it. But on two occasions when I was volunteering in the class, I noticed older kids (2nd/3rd graders) snickering when they overheard him speaking, but he was unaware of it. He has never brought up his stutter, to me he is an enthusiastic communicator, and it doesn't seem to slow him down at all -- yet. But I also know that kids are cruel, especially as they get a little older. My instinct is to homeschool them for their formative years, so that they at least develop a solidly stable, positive, core sense of identity before being thrown to the wolves. My biggest fear is that bullying will start without my knowing, and that it will turn his mild/moderate stutter into something much more extreme due to added anxiety and self-consciousness. His SLP mentioned a story of another client of hers who is 9 and getting so horribly bullied at school that it has led to severe blocks and lots of secondary behaviors. The poor, sweet babe... I also might be projecting some of my own trauma onto my kids, as I went through a horrible period of bullying in my senior year of high school which caused severe emotional issues for me that I think I'm still working through, even at age 40. It was so awful, I'd do anything to prevent something similar from happening to my kids. I loved homeschooling my oldest, and she loved being homeschooled, and I have the time and resources to homeschool my two youngest right now. My mom is convinced that I should keep him in public school for another year or two because it's still light and fun in the early years, but I want to pull him sooner. The catch is that if I do pull him from his elementary school and he doesn't like homeschooling, I wouldn't be able to place him there again, and he'd have to start anew at a different school. So I guess my question is, what was your experience growing up? Was the bullying horrific? Did you enjoy elementary school or wish that you had been given other educational options? What would you do with your own children if they were stuttering? Thanks in advance <3

Themes

Parent & CaregiverIdentity & DisabilityEmotional ExperienceCauses & Variability

Subthemes

Early Concern & OnsetSchool/Clinical AdvocacyStigma & BullyingAnxiety & Social JudgmentTrauma & Psychological