This week (May 13-19) is National Stuttering Awareness Week. Few people know about this because only 1 percent of the population stutters.
For those of us who stutter, it's a chance to raise awareness and educate those who don't.
People often don't understand stuttering, so sometimes it seems acceptable to laugh, tease, mock or exclude. Those are forms of bullying. It's one of the last disabilities that people still openly make fun of.
I know firsthand what it's like to get "the look" or to have someone finish my sentence for me — and be wrong.
People who stutter know exactly what we want to say; it just takes us longer to get our words out. Stuttering is an involuntary disruption to the normal flow of speech. That's all.
We're not nervous, shy or unstable. It doesn't help us to be told to slow down, take a deep breath or think about what we're going to say.
If that did help, we'd be doing it already.
Listen to us the same way you would anyone else. And remember that what we have to say is more important than how we say it.
Pamela Mertz
Menands