About the Author: Hi! My name is Dhriti Rao and I’m currently a Junior at a high school in Washington state. I like to dance, spend time with family and friends, play piano, and volunteer. I really wanted to submit something for this event because I am a teenager who stutters and wanted to share my perspective on the topic. Thank you.

I have lived a relatively easy life so far. I am healthy. I live in a nice neighborhood and go to a good school. My family is well off, and I am surrounded by kind people. The only hardship I have ever had is having a stutter, which has hung like a rainy cloud over my otherwise sunny life. Though I have mostly overcome it, the normalization of stuttering is important to me because of the impact it had and continues to have on me and over 80 million people i.e. 1% of the world’s population.

Stuttering is something every single person I’ve talked to claims to do when they are nervous. However, what they are experiencing during these stressful circumstances are momentary disfluencies. Real stuttering, on the other hand, is when someone frequently experiences severe disfluencies, often anticipating them. Stuttering also often involves physical tension in some part of their body as they try to force out the word they wish to say. It is a funny disability, appearing and disappearing at its will. Thus, stuttering does not invite the compassion of a persistent disability, such as speech or hearing impairment, motor functions, or the more severe developmental challenges. Society often unknowingly mocks stutterers, denying them a chance to fully participate in any activity that involves talking. To give a real-life example, many stutterers find it difficult to say their name when asked for it. People almost always ask, “Did you forget your name?”. Sure, it is a joke, but that joke just rubbed salt on a raw wound.

There are a few tricks stutterers, including myself, use. We try to change the word we want to say to something else of similar meaning or pronounce the word a little differently to make it easier to get the word out. But either way, our brains are constantly working overtime trying to quickly find synonyms on the spot along with already being overwhelmed with the usual anxiety of just trying to talk. Even for those who claim to have overcome stuttering, the fear of stuttering and being judged is always at the back of their minds. It causes unnecessary anxiety, stress, and fear about something that is a vital skill every single person needs to have.

I think the main cause for all this is that stuttering is not something that is seen as normal by people. Everyone, including stutterers, think stuttering is abnormal and weird. We have to change this mindset. People need to understand that every single person has disfluencies and while stutterers may experience more severe and frequent moments of disfluencies, we all need to understand that this is normal. Just like how some people might be taller or shorter than others, some people are more or less fluent than others. If we consider a wide range of heights as normal, why can’t we consider a wide range of amounts of disfluencies as normal? Differences between people are so incredibly important to society so it is crucial to embrace and enhance these differences. However, none of this normalization and acceptance is possible if stutterers continue to hide their stutter or shy away from activities that might expose it in front of other people. I’m guilty of doing this as well but I’m working on doing everything I want and saying everything I want to say. I believe every other person can do exactly what I’m trying to do as well. To all the stutterers and people who feel like they can’t be themselves, you can do this! After all, “If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world.” – Elaine S. Dalton.