Cheryl,
I agree with most of what Jon says. At McGuire, you undboubtedly heard
about Joseph Sheehan, Ph.D., Dave McGuire's former therapist.
Sheehan's mentor, Charles Gage Van Riper, Ph.D., also a stutterer, used
to tell a story about his youth in which he stopped at a gas station
and stuttered badly while asking for gas. An old man started laughing.
Van Riper got offended but the old man said, "son, I stutter, too. I
used to sound just like you. But I'm just too old and tired to
struggle like that anymore." Van Riper noticed that the old man did
indeed stutter, but with no blocks. He just had easy repetitions with
no struggle. As Jon says, the old man had stopped fighting his stutter
and had accepted it. This is what Van Riper and Sheehan taught.
The only thing I would not agree with Jon about is the Stuttering
Dating Service. First, it is definately NOT a new idea. Every 6 or
seven months, since the founding of StutterintChat, some guy (always a
guy) suggests this. It would never work. 80% of adult stutterers are
men. Moreover, as you and I have discussed over the phone, stuttering,
vis a vis dating, is more of a problem for men than it is for women in
any case. Guys care about how a woman looks, not whether or not she
stutters. Women, however, do care how a man talks. There is an old
maxim which is very true, "Men fall in love with their eyes, women fall
in love with their ears." Stuttering can be quite a problem for men on
the dating scene. Not an insurmountable problem, but a real one.
David
