Talk:Speech-Language Pathology/Stuttering/What Worked for Me

I started stuttering at a very early age. I did have great family problems do to the fact that my mother separated from my father when I was very young. At the beginning I run into a greater problem, because my mother's brother (my uncle),thought that I was stuttering in order to gain attention and he made fun of me constantly. My mother did remarried after my father died. I was then 8 years old. My step-father was a very good man, but a very bossy man too. He was like the old spanish type of men. Very male conscious and made no attempt to hide the fact that he was the undisputable head of the family and the boss. My stuttering increassed accordingly. A friend of the family used to laugh at me for my stuttering and every time I tried to say something, and started stuttering, he laughed and said "say it singing", since I liked to sing and when I did sing, I did not stutter.

At the age of 16 I went into the Military Academy of my country, Colombia, which was considered a very special and distintive honor, but to my desperation, my stuttering made life misserable for me. I did have a class mate, a young boy a little older than me, very handsome and good looking who also stutter. He held the second highest grade in the class and was very popular, in spite of his stuttering. He did not seem to bother at all for his stuttering problem. I really did envy him for being so strong and independent.

When vacation time in December came around, I went home with two big problems: my stuttering and acne. Offcourse my romantic life was also misserable, I could not talk to a girl since I was afraid of stuttering and make a fool of myself. A very good M.D. ,friend of the family, told my mother that he could cure my acne in less than a month. He was specialized in gastric problems. The december vacations in my country are the longest period, around three months and I took advantage of this period to get rid of my acne problem. But I also decided that I would get rid of my stuttering problem.

Thinking of my speach dificulties, I discoverd that I did have problems with certain phrases that started with some specific letters, such as /b/, /d/, /s/, etc. and started creating in my mind a bypass in such a manner that I would never start a sentence with any word that started with the letters that I had difficulties with. When I returned in January of the next year to school, I was the wonder of the class since I had no acne, and I did not stutter. My grades improved a great deal and so did my personal life, specially my romantic life; my personality and my attitude towards life improved also.

Since that time I have used this system which has given me excellent results. If anybody would had told me, when I was 14 or 15 years old, that much later in my life I would be a speacker at important events, I would had told that person that he was crazy; I could not say more than 3 words together without getting stocked. But for the past 20 years I have being a lecturer at many Lions Club events. My speach abilities are well pondered by my fellow lions. The best conference I had delivered has being on the theme "How to speack in Public". I had told my fellow lions friends that one of the reasons I did stutter was because I was shy. I thought that I could not speack to an audience; off course that was part of my problem too. All my chidhood experiences had affected my speach abilities, my self esteem was always very low, and I had a very poor opinion of myself.

The word substituting system, at the beginning of sentences, have worked for me. The important fact is to discover which are the words that affect me. I do not know if for every person there are different words, or the same words seem to bother all people, all I know is that for me this system did worked. I am currently 76 years old and I have not had any problem since the age of 16, so I think that I am cured. By the way, having overcomed my stuttering problem have also improved my self esteem.

Stuttering can become a very complicated problem and may affect a person in many different ways. Not every person can be like my classmate in the military accademy. Many people get frustrated and ruin their lifes on account of this handicap. Today I am a much happier person and I have being able to raise a healthy family full of love. Proffessionally I also have had success. I studied engineering after leaving the Army at the age of 23, and I am retired now, trying to help other people and very happy at doing it. Ramiro Besada--Rbesadal 17:12, 9 October 2006 (UTC) (hr)