About the Author: Allison Ladavat is a person who stutters and an SLP. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, where she still lives today with her husband and their three children. Allison serves as the One-Day Conference program director for Friends, the national association of young people who stutter. She also works as the clinical instructor for the stuttering clinic at Duquesne University. Allison is passionate about educating students and SLPs so they are confident working with people who stutter.

One afternoon as my youngest daughter Hazel was playing ‘pretend’ with dolls, I overheard something interesting from one of her characters. She stuttered. So, I stopped what I was doing and watched for a minute without my daughter noticing. She held up different dolls, moving them up and down as she spoke for them. Each character had a slightly different tone, different prosody. And one of them just happened to stutter. I’m pretty confident stuttering wasn’t actually essential to the plot line of this pretend play. Instead, by simply having a mother who stutters overtly, this type of speech pattern was as normal to Hazel as not stuttering was at that time. In her 4-year-old brain, stuttering was just something people do. If children can have this perspective of stuttering, then surely adults can as well. And if adults can view stuttering as something that “just is,” then maybe normalization of stuttering can be achieved, resulting in a more accessible and equitable society for people who stutter.

 As an SLP working with individuals who stutter, parents of young clients regularly express concerns to me about their children’s futures. As a parent and a stutterer, I empathize with them. Regardless of what our children’s unique strengths and struggles are, we worry about them and want them to have happy, healthy, fulfilling lives, whatever their paths may be.  And yes, it’s true – being a person who stutters in this world can be incredibly difficult. The world is not made for us. But instead of resigning ourselves to this as something that’s “just the way it is,” we can work to normalize stuttering so that stuttering can be something that “just is,” in the same way it was in 4-year-old Hazel’s pretend world. Though I cannot predict a child’s future or confidently tell a parent that stuttering will never be an obstacle, I can reassure them that it doesn’t HAVE to be. However, I worry that most parents don’t believe me when I tell them this. “But, I’ve never heard a doctor stutter, or anyone in my company, or anyone on tv.” I then tell these parents about all the people I know personally who stutter – doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers, actors, writers – but it’s not enough. They are not experiencing stuttering enough to accept that truth. If we want stuttering to become normalized, we can’t continue working to hide it. If we want children to truly believe they can achieve all the same goals as people who don’t stutter, then we have to actually show them. Stuttering can be an invisible disorder, but only if we let it. 

I certainly do not criticize or fault any person who avoids or hides stuttering. Most of us were likely conditioned to do just that. Being praised for our “smooth speech,” told to repeat our stuttered utterances, and having our disfluencies counted and pointed out to us – why wouldn’t we learn how to minimize stuttering by any means possible? Beginning as children and continuing throughout our lives, we experience negative messaging about our speech. Some of us have been teased and mocked. Microaggressions occur daily. And unfortunately, discrimination can and does occur. Of course, every stutterer’s experience is unique, but one thing we all have in common is that the society we live in is what ultimately disables us. In order to make everyday life more accessible and equitable for people who stutter, we must continue to work on educating the public and advocating for people who stutter. I don’t want to minimize the importance of this and do not place the responsibility of changing perceptions of stuttering solely on people who stutter. This is where I expect our allies, especially SLP’s, to help and support us. While that work continues, we can help change the experiences and perceptions of stuttering for other people who stutter by being more visible. 

Recently, the mother of one of my teenage clients gave me one of the best compliments on a day I was particularly feeling like I wasn’t doing enough as an SLP to help this girl. “She just loves coming here to see you. I think she really likes hearing you stutter.” By stuttering openly, I was helping this client without even realizing it at the time. I was normalizing something that, up until that point, she had been made to view as “wrong, bad, disordered.” I helped her to not feel alone, just by being myself. The first time I had this feeling as a person who stutters was when I met my friend Caryn. I wonder how my life and stuttering journey could have been much different had our stuttering not been exposed to each other. Caryn and I were undergraduates in college, in the same American Sign Language (ASL) class. In this class, we were not allowed to communicate verbally. Because of this, we had several ASL classes together before actually hearing each other speak. One day after class we started talking to each other and then went to lunch together in the cafeteria. I don’t remember how it all exactly happened, but it was then that we noticed each other’s stuttering. I had never experienced this before. A girl my age who also stutters?? I had always known I wasn’t alone, that there were other people out there just like me. But, until that moment, I didn’t feel it. I had always felt alone. That feeling of being alone and different is what drove me to avoid stuttering and learn how to be as covert as possible in the first place. I was still covert when I met Caryn, but I wasn’t always successful, and now I’m thankful for that. I’m so thankful we noticed each other’s stuttering that day. So thankful I failed to hide my stutter. Failed to pass as fluent. 

At this point in my life, I’m the most overtly disfluent I’ve ever been. It can be frustrating, annoying, upsetting, and it can complicate everyday interactions that other people take for granted. Instead of dwelling on these moments, I like to think that maybe the vulnerability I’m experiencing through exposing my stuttering is helping to open the door for someone who is not quite ready yet. Maybe through hearing me stutter, someone else feels less alone, like I did when I met my friend Caryn. So, thank you to all of you who were vulnerable before I was ready. Thank you for being visible, seen, heard. As someone who lived as a covert stutterer for so many years, I wouldn’t have been able to learn how to accept my stuttering without you. I wouldn’t have learned how to reject society’s standards of “normal/abnormal, right/wrong.” And most importantly, I could not help other people who stutter without you. Stuttering visibility benefits everyone. By modeling open and overt stuttering, we can help those who are not yet ready. By exposing stuttering to everyday listeners, we are helping to desensitize them to stuttering, hopefully changing their perspective of what stuttering is. Through overt stuttering, we are also continuing to desensitize ourselves, strengthening our ability to reject societal standards of communication. Maybe stuttering won’t ever be as normalized as it was in Hazel’s pretend world. But through education, exposure, higher visibility, stronger advocacy, it CAN be something that “just is.”