1. Stuttering and Self Esteem
Presented by:
Jon Smith
Sponsored by:
The Stuttering Network

2. First off I want to thank all of you here at The Stuttering Network for letting me come and speak at one of your support group meetings. It really means a lot to me that you would give an opportunity like this to me. Thank you.

3. Today I am going to talk at little bit about self-esteem and why it’s important for us as parents to pay attention to our child’s self-esteem. Since all of you here are the parents of children who stutter it’s also important to know that your child might be more susceptible to having low self-esteem.

4. What Is Self-Esteem? Self-esteem might sound pretty complicated, but not if you break it into two words. Let's take a look at the word esteem first. Esteem: According to The Nemours Foundation article “The story on self-esteem” (2002), esteem is a fancy word for valuing someone or something, or thinking that someone or something is important. For example, if you really admire your friend's dad because of all his great work at the volunteer fire department, it means you hold him in high esteem. Or the special trophy for the MVP of a team is often called "an esteemed trophy." This means the trophy is an important accomplishment.

5. Self: means, well, yourself
Self: means, well, yourself! So when you put the two words together to make the term self-esteem, it's easier to see what self-esteem is. It's how much you value yourself and how important you think you are. It's how you see yourself and how you feel about your accomplishments. This information was also obtained from The Nemours Foundation in the article “The story on self-esteem” (2002).

6. That’s why it’s so important that we make sure our children don’t have a problem with self-esteem. It’s already hard enough on them just having a stuttering problem.

7. Could Stutterer’s have a problem with Self-Esteem?
It was recently brought to our attention by Tom and Debbie Adkins that our children who stutter could have issues with self-esteem that we as parents might not be aware of.
In fact the Adkins’ SLP pointed out to them that their son, Tyler, could have a self-esteem issue.

8. The Adkins’ have given us permission to use their son Tyler as an example throughout this whole presentation. So therefore all of the examples will be about Tyler and his self-esteem issue.

9. Here are some signs that your child could have low self-esteem:
The child keeps to themselves a lot, doesn’t have many friends.
Often complains about going to school or even speech therapy.
Gets called names a lot at school.
Seems withdrawn from everything.
Loss of excitement, seems to be depressed a lot.
Their progress in therapy might me going down hill.
Some children will even avoid talking, this is because they often get teased. This information appears in the journal Current Health 2 under the article of “Stuttering” (2002).

10. Tyler’s SLP, Cheryl, noticed that he could have a self-esteem issue by reading his weekly journal entries. We will now pass around two of Tyler’s Journal entries so that you might be able to notice if your child exhibits any of these things. Tyler's Journal Entries

11. What were some signs of low self-esteem in these journal entries?
When he states that his attitude slowly went down hill as the day progressed.
When he stated that people laughed at him and made fun of him.
When he stated that he wanted to go home.
When he says that he’s reminded of his flaws as a person.
When he stated that he often has good and bad days.

12. If you are able to identify that your child could have a self esteem issue here are a few people we suggest contacting:
Contact your child’s SLP
Contact your child’s teacher
Contact the school counselor

13. Here are a few unique ways of contacting those people:
You may contact them via exchange.
You may also elect to send them a formal letter as did Cheryl when contacting the Adkins’.
We will now pass around examples of both of these methods. These two methods make it a little easier to stay in contact if you’re a busy person.

14. If you don’t feel comfortable writing, there are various other ways to get in touch with these individuals. For example, you may contact them by phone or in person. It just depends on your own individual needs.

15. When contacting your child’s SLP you might want to make it clear to them that you would like them to asses the child’s self-esteem in therapy along with other things. This is because some believe that because stutterers vary widely in their characteristics, therapy will succeed most when the entire range of the client’s behaviors, not just speech, is considered (Ham, 1990, p. 202).

16. You may also want to suggest to your SLP to use supportive care in therapy. Supportive care might help your child to take what they learned in therapy and apply in other settings such as school. This might make your child more confident when speaking at school. (Vekassy, 1993, p. 51).

17. After contacting your SLP you might also want to think about having your child participate in a self-help group for stutterers of their own age. Self-help groups are able to provide a substitute for more normal social intercourse, which is often barred to stutterers, or difficult or stressful for them to participate in (Rustin, Purser, & Rowley, 1987, p. 201). Self-help groups help stutterers to express their emotions and other things better. If your child can learn how to express their emotions better maybe they wouldn’t keep as much in and this would in turn have a positive affect on their self-esteem.

18. I can’t stress enough how important it is to pay attention to your child’s feelings about themselves. Here is a poem that Tyler wrote while in therapy, I think you all might find it very interesting. He wrote about how it feels to be a stutterer and the hardships you go through. Here is Tyler’s I am poem.

19. As you can see our children have many worries and concerns of their very own. Sometimes we as parents over look these concerns because we think they’re too young to worry about things like that. But the fact remains that our children do have worries and concerns no matter what age they are. Sometimes the most important thing to them might seem really stupid or minor to us. That’s why it’s important that we talk with our children and support them. Let them know that we’re proud of them and how much we love them. Even though they probably know all of those things it’s still important for them to hear them.

20. I hope you all learned a lot from my presentation and I would like to invite you to stay for the Support Group Meeting. For those of you who are new please pick up a brochure about The Stuttering Network on your way out.

21. Also, If you all enjoyed my presentation and would like to see some more of my work you may do so by going to my website at Here is a preview of my webliography. You may add comments to my work there and let me know what you think. I also have some fun links on there that you might enjoy. Once again thanks to all of you for taking the time out to listen to me.