Stutter-free at 35 ...

[warrick]

Hi all,
I was reading some recent forum posts and I had a flash back to something that I read many years ago but for some reason stuck with me.

I read that it is very common for people to lose their stutter in their mid thirties as it is a time in peoples life where they often learn to be more comfortable with themselves and their identity. From this they gain an inner peace which allows more relaxed and comfortable speech, causing a stutter to fade and possibly even disappear in some cases.

I think it stuck in my head because I could see valid points both for and against the article, so I was left undecided.

Has anyone else noticed this, or at least heard of this ever being the case?

[Jason]

I have heard from a person that stutters saying that as the years passed they have had less worries and became more accepting of their stutter. The person believed that these 2 things are a big factor in their level of fluency.

I think stutter-free is a bit of an exaggeration. However, I see no reason why as time passes a person cannot improve their level of their fluency. Stress, anxiety and worries all increase the amount of stuttering. If you shed many of these as you age then you would expect the frequency of stuttering to fall as well.

[warrick]

Yes. Stutter-free without any effort towards it is definately hard to imagine.

Another article I read many years ago that stuck with me was that 30% (this is a guess as I just remember thinking it was high) of people that stutter, do not stutter on a daily basis due to organising their life around situation avoidance. ie. they have organised things so that they are never in a situation where they stutter. Once again, I think this is an exaggeration, but it does make you think how much of a stutterers life is a constant battle with situation avoidance. I know it is for me, not only avoiding situations of stress, but also the way I scan words ahead to pick out words I will have trouble with. Once again, my entire focus is on avoidance instead of putting my energies into the topic of conversation and the person Im interacting with.