Chapter Meeting – June 18, 2019
We were only two people at this week’s meeting. It was nice to catch up on recent events and plans for the Summer.
We are taking a break for the month of July.
Have a nice 4th of July and enjoy your Summer!
Chapter Meeting – June 6, 2019
We started the meeting with the Welcoming Words and introductions.
Our first topic was regarding secondary characteristics associated with our stutter and Terets in particular. One of our attendees was diagnosed with a very mild form of Terets and he questions whether stuttering could be a symptom developed from it or a form of Terets.
Another person has noticed that older people don’t seem to stutter as severely. Currently, he can’t imagine being fluent as an older version. Some reasons for it can’t be that people are more mellow. They accept themselves more easily and they have less to prove to others or to themselves. All of which contributes to more self-confidence and more fluency.
Chapter Meeting – May 22, 2019
We were four people at this meeting, all regular members..
One of our young adult attendees has been giving presentations about stuttering to a couple of student groups in her school as part of the end-of-year activities. She told them about how it feels when she stutters, she dispelled myths about what stuttering is and it is not. She gave tips about how to interact with a person who stutters and had a fellow student to role play a typical situation. Way to go! What a great opportunity to educate others.
We talked about how disclosure sometimes can backfire at you. It happened once to one of our members during a job interview. There are other times when the non-stutterer doesn’t feel comfortable after disclosure has happened. We talked about a comedian that stutters and makes jokes about himself in stuttering situations. Many times people don’t feel comfortable laughing at those jokes. But you can also say that the comedian is not doing a god job if is making people uncomfortable. How would you feel?
The topic about therapists that stutter came up. Some people would not choose one because they don’t think that a person that has not overcome their own stuttering can help them with their own. One of our attendees was an SLP that stutters and this is what he tells people about it. Michael Jordan is one of the best basketball players of all time and he had a coach. Was his coach better than him? Why would Michael Jordan need a coach? A coach is not necessarily better than the athlete. A coach has experience, tools and knowledge about the sport, observes the player and sees things that the athlete doesn’t notice and is able to offer advice.
We finished the meeting with the Closing words and wished everyone a good Memorial Day weekend
Chapter Meeting – April 16, 2019
We met at Temple University. We had three new people, one of them a friend that came to support a new attendee on her first meeting.
One of the new members came as a way to challenge himself to talk to groups of people. We talked about Toastmasters as another venue to learn and practice talking to audiences, improve communication skills and remove bad habits.
The second first-timer is a young person that has fear of speaking and fear of what people would think if she stutters. We all shared experiences like that but we also encouraged her to not focus on what people will say but on what she wants to communicate. We agree that we are all our worse enemies and we think that what people see when we stutter is worse than what we feel. It is not easy to take that step but I hope we encouraged her enough to try.
Chapter Meeting – April 4, 2019
Four of us met at the Bala Cynwyd Library, one of them a family member. After the Welcoming words, we introduced ourselves and shared a movie that we have enjoyed recently.
Three of us had attended the previous week’s Panel of People that Stutter at La Salle University and we talked about the experience.
We talked about the difference between identifying ourselves as “stutterer” versus saying “I stutter” or “I am a person that stutters”. We prefer saying “I stutter”. “Stutterer” feels like a label, which can have a lot of negative connotations. It feels like it is a definition of all we are, as opposed as just one more quality about us.
A question was posed that made us think a lot: Would you go to a therapist that stutters? You would think that it would be an advantage because that person would understand a lot of what we go through. But some wouldn’t go to a therapist that stutters because if he/she is still stuttering, can the therapist help you? It was an interesting question and we spent quite sometime talking about the pros and cons. What would you do?
Chapter Meeting – March 7, 2019
We were five people at this meeting and this time we welcomed two students from the Fluency Disorders Graduate Program of La Salle University.
We started the meeting with our Welcoming words and introductions. The students have to do an exercise for their class in which they have to pretend that they stutter and observe people’s reactions as well as their own feelings. They shared their experience with us and they were surprised at how difficult it was to carry on with the exercise.
We shared a lot of our experiences. They had a lot of questions for us and wanted to know how to be better therapists and help people that stutter in the future.