Back to School: The Video Every Parent and Teacher Should See

As families and teachers prepare for the start of school, stuttering in the classroom, the lunchroom, and the playground remain challenging and problematic for many. Some five percent — one out of every 20 children — may experience stuttering for six months or more.

To provide important guidance, the Stuttering Foundation offers its “Help! My Child is Stuttering” video free of charge.

“This is the one video every parent and teacher should see before the next school begins to help promote understanding of stuttering and a smooth transition into the new school year,” said Stuttering Foundation President Jane Fraser. “New teacher, new classroom, or even new school--for the child who stutters, surmounting these challenges can seem overwhelming.”

The Stuttering Foundation also hosts a “Back to School” page of resources for parents and teachers.

Back-to-school resources for parents

• Video- Help! My Child is Stuttering

• Video- The ABC's of Stuttering

• Video- 7 Tips for Talking with the Child Who Stutters

• Notes to the Teacher

• Video- Stuttering and Your Child: Help for Parents

• Therapy in the Schools

• Sometimes I Just Stutter

• Video- Stuttering: For kids, By Kids

• Famous People Who Stutter

Back-to-school resources for teachers

• Video- The ABC's of Stuttering

• Stuttering Straight Talk for Teachers Handbook

• 8 Tips for Teachers

• Famous People Who Stutter

• Dear Teacher

• DVD: Straight Talk for Teachers

• FAQ for Teachers

• Notes to the Teacher: The Child Who Stutters at School

• 7 Tips for Talking with Your Child

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Bob Love

The late Bob Love dreamt about being a great public speaker since his early days in Bastrop Louisiana, even though, as a young man, he could barely put two words together, let alone speak a full sentence.

In spite of his severe stuttering disability, Bob Love, the son of a sharecropper, rose to become a Chicago Bulls NBA superstar, whose records were eventually surpassed by Michael Jordan. Throughout his entire athletic career, Bob Love kept his stuttering a secret from the fans who adored him, thinking he could do his “talking” on the basketball court.

Frank Wolf

This Virginian congressman has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981. The longtime supporter of the Stuttering Foundation drew national attention to childhood stuttering in 2006 when he submitted an article about Tiger Woods from the SFA newsletter to the Congressional Record. The congressman is featured in the Stuttering Foundation's Famous People Who Stutter brochure.

King George

In November 2010, worldwide movie audiences were presented with a most interesting and unusual movie release with The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth as King George VI and Helena Bonham Carter as his wife Elizabeth.

Unfortunately, history may have forgotten the courageous and inspiring story of Prince Albert who stuttered badly and never dreamed that he would ever be king when his older brother, King Edward VIII, abruptly abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee.

Lewis Carroll

The recent Disney version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, garnered a great deal of media hype. Even though the mainstream media has not made mention that Carroll was a person who stuttered, his family history gives credence to the discovery of the genetic link to stuttering. Carroll was born to parents who were first cousins; almost all of their eleven children, three girls and seven boys, struggled with stuttering past childhood.

Winston Churchill

Seeking to "remove Winston Churchill's stutter by second guessing the diagnosis" indicates neither a truthful retelling of history nor an informed opinion about a complex speech disorder, say experts in the field of speech-language pathology.

Recent news reports that quote Dr. John Mather, a Washington physician, as saying that Churchill's stutter "is a lie" brought adamant critical response from specialists in the field of stuttering and fluency disorders.