Speaking Out About Stuttering : Conference Addresses Possible Causes, Early Treatment, Emotional Support

In two weeks, Angela Lunt, 14, will give the speech of her life when she stands before her history classroom at Esperanza High School and lays bare her struggle with stuttering.

Words do not come easily for Lunt, and the years of taunting she has suffered appear to have taken their toll. Even before a supportive group of other people who stutter, her deep-blue eyes are cast downward and she speaks in a whisper while summing up how she has been treated by people who do not stutter.

“In the third grade, I got teased the whole year; then in fifth grade, there was a new student who arrived and he would go ‘uh-uh-uh-uh’ to me,” she said, mimicking her stutter.

The verbal abuse lasted through eighth grade, until he began teasing her in writing. The same boy has continued imitating her and will be in the room when she gives her presentation.

Lunt was one of about 50 people who stutter or who have relatives who stutter. They met Saturday at Cal State Fullerton for a symposium sponsored by the Anaheim Hills-based National Stuttering Project.

At the gathering titled “Year of the Child Who Stutters,” adults talked about helping children receive both the emotional support and the critical speech therapy many of the participants said they did not receive at an early age.

“I want to talk to the kids,” said Mark Power, a member of the National Stuttering Project and the director of the Power Stuttering Center in Mission Viejo.

Power explained to the group that after he was teased in the third grade while trying to give a weather report, he lowered his life’s ambitions.

“I decided that I could not be a doctor; I couldn’t be a lawyer--and my father and grandfather had been lawyers,” Power said. He finally got help, but the longer time passes before therapy, the harder it is to correct the problem, he said.

“When you’re an adult who stutters, it is a bear to change the behavior,” Power said. “I wish they had had good therapy when I was young.”

No exact cause for stuttering, which affects 2 million to 3 million Americans, has been pinpointed, but recent research into the speech disorder indicates that the roots might be neurological.

UC Irvine psychiatrist Gerald Maguire and his colleagues have traced the disorder to a spot deep within the brain that activates speech circuits. Early findings show that the spot, called the left caudate, is far less active in stutterers than in people who speak fluently.

At the symposium, Maguire--who also stutters--debunked myths that a parent’s behavior causes a child to stutter or that stuttering is indicative of indecision or untruthfulness, or the manifestation of emotional instability.

Stress and anxiety might make stuttering worse, but do not cause the condition, he said. And like other speakers, he emphasized that children who receive therapy at a young age can get better.

“It’s important to get the child at the youngest possible age because the brain is still developing,” Maguire said. Early intervention also will help children deal with the low self-esteem, anxiety and frustration that stuttering can create.

“Each New Year’s, I’d make a resolution that this was the year I was not gonna stutter, and each year by Jan. 2, I’d be mad at myself,” Maguire said. “Stuttering affects our psychology--it affects how we view the world and how the world views us.”

In the future, new medicines might help stutterers regulate their speech, he said. But like those who suffer from high blood pressure in which the symptoms may be similar, Maguire said, the causes of the problem may vary, just like stuttering.

“I may have it for one reason and you may have it for another,” he said. “If we’re looking for one single cause, we’re not going to find it.”