|
|
|
If you are the mother or father of a child who stammers, you should first of all read Chapters IX to XIV, inclusive, in Part Two of this book. These chapters deal with the speech disorders of children from before the first spoken word up until the age of 21, when structurally as well as legally the mind and body of the infant merge into that of the adult.
No mother or father can understand their child's disorder without having read these Chapters. To fail to understand is to multiply the chance for error in deciding what to do. Therefore, I repeat, if you are the mother or father of a boy or girl who stammers, read chapters on Child Stammering before you go further.
There are three mistaken beliefs in the minds of many parents of stammering children which must be rooted out before the child will have an opportunity to be cured of his trouble.
These beliefs are:
All of these beliefs are entirely fallacious and based purely upon ignorance of the cause and progress of the child's trouble. There is not the slightest scientific foundation for them, they are not beliefs based on facts or upon experience--yet in many homes, they constitute the chief obstacle between the stammering child and his complete and permanent cure.
As long as you believe that your child will out-grow his or her trouble, you take no steps to have the disorder eradicated.
What happens?
The trouble becomes worse from month to month and from year to year, until in many cases where the "outgrowing belief" persists, the trouble passes into a chronic and incurable stage and the stammering child becomes the stammering man or woman, condemned to go through life under a handicap almost too great to bear.
Write it on your heart that your child will not outgrow his trouble. Ponder over the information given in the Chapters on Child Stammering. This is not hearsay or guess-work but facts gleaned from a lifetime of experience.
If you, as the father or mother of a stammering child, cling to the second belief, that your child could stop stammering if he would try, then I can see from this distance that your child has stored up for him in the future, more than his due of misery. For as long as you believe that he can stop of his own free will, you will be impatient with him when he stammers. You will scold him and tell him to "stop that kind of talking!" Thus you will irritate him, and bring to his heart that sickening sensation that he is totally helpless in the grip of his speech disorder and yet-- "Oh, why will they not understand?"
Like the first belief, this belief that the child could stop if he wanted to, is based upon ignorance. No mother or father who has ever experienced the sensation of fear that grips the heart of the stammering child when he tries to speak, will say that he could stop if he would.
I say to you--and I want to emphasize this--that the first and foremost ambition of your child who stammers, is to be free from it. The greatest day of his life will be the day when he can talk without that fear, without sticking and stumbling and hesitating over his utterances.
I say to you again--if that boy or girl of yours could stop their stammering, he or she would stop it this very instant. They would never stammer again--if they were endowed with the power to stop. But they are not. That is the very seed of their trouble--their inability to control the actions of the vocal organs so as to produce normal speech. They have lost the control of those organs and they cannot of their own volition re-establish that control.
The third belief, that stammering cannot be cured, is so easily demolished that I shall devote but little time to it. It, like all false beliefs, has its foundation in ignorance. The mother or father who knows the facts, knows also that stammering can be cured. You may not know whether your boy or girl can be cured, but you are offered a way to find out--definitely and positively, by describing your child's case on my Diagnosis Blank and returning it to me for a thorough Diagnosis.
Put your beliefs to one side--whatever they may be. You can get the facts if you want them. You can learn the truth if you will. Truth is better than false beliefs and facts are better than superstition or hearsay, which in every case leads to misery, dejection and despair--a ruined life where a successful, happy and contented life might have been--except for stammering.
You have a well-defined responsibility to your son or daughter. You have a duty to perform--that is, to equip that boy or girl of yours to go out into the world as well equipped as any other boy or girl--and that means equipped with perfect speech--without which they will be too greatly handicapped to fully succeed.
 |  |  |
|
|
|