I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes. I recently spoke with someone who stuttered and that reminded me of a little girl who lived near me when I was a kid. She had a sever stuttering problem, except when she played with dolls, or sang. I don't know how else to describe it. When we'd play Barbie's, she would use her 'Barbie voice' and the stuttering came to an abrupt halt. Why, do you think that was like that *********************************************************************** 11-21-02, 05:59 PM MkStfnz Speech therapists often aid children in stopping their stuttering habits, and from what I understand a lot of it has to do with the way a person breaths in relation to their speech.
In making her "Barbie voice," this girl was concentrating on what she was saying, how she was saying it, etc. I'm sure that in speaking, her breathing rate changed too. Probably this aided in her ability to refrain from stuttering.
For more information about stuttering, read this article from WebMD .
11-22-02, 12:43 AM samantha my mom always said when my one brother was very small he had a bad stuttering problem.But, she always said when he got sick and ran a fever and all he woudnt stutter. She never figured that one out either..Just a thought.
11-23-02, 02:00 AM MrSensitive As a stutterer, I can say, with some experience, folks usually don't stutter when they alter their voice. Stuttering usually occurs when the brain jumps ahead of the mouth (though not always). Sometimes it only occurs with certain letters or words (for me, many words beginning with "ex-" can bring on a stutter or "stall"). When one's vocalizations are altered, they change their natural inflections. This focuses concentration on the vocal chords/patterns, rather than what is being (or will be) said.
Mr(se-se-se)Sensitive
11-23-02, 10:31 AM Sherasi There is not a specifically known cause for stuttering, but there is evidence that brain scans differ between stuttering adults and "normal adults". Early intervention with children who stutter can create different speech pathways and reduce or eliminate stuttering by the time adulthood is reached. However, if no intervention is done, the brain "remembers" and "learns" these pathways and the stuttering is almost permanent.
If you know someone who stutters, or you yourself stutter, chanting can help reduce the occurance of stuttering. I assume that most people would not object to a chant (if they want to hear a sentence free of stuttering).
11-23-02, 12:14 PM Brat I agree with Sherasi, as a child I had a severe stuttering problem. I struggled with the letter "L", always stumbling on it. This resulted in my being made fun of in classes, especially as we started to learn how to read.
I dreaded being called upon to read out loud, knowing that when I hit a word with a strong "L" sound, I would stutter. I dreaded school, and missed a lot of it. By the second grade I started speech lessons with a therapist. It took about six months to correct my speech pattern, focusing on exercises to "train" my tongue and mouth in word formulation.
Over time, the stuttering has stopped. With exercises, slowing down my speech and thinking about what I am going to say first I have been able to overcome my stutter.
11-29-02, 11:02 PM Northwind Dagas I studder quite often in normal everyday conversations. For me, it seems I know what I want to say, but it sometimes gets jumbled before reaching my mouth. Often times, what I say is actually the combination of two synomyns. For instance, if I wanted to say, "I walked down the road." it might come out as "I walked down the stroad." (stroad being a combo of "road" and "street") I attributed this to the 'brain outrunning the mouth' phenomenon that Mr. Sensitive described. However, I never studdered when I was younger, and this has been something that's developed in the last 5 years or so. Guess I just weird...
2-01-02, 05:13 AM gizmogram One of Country Music's Greats speaks of his stuttering Here .
His was one of the first cases I'd ever heard of where when singing or acting, stuttering didn't come into play.
12-01-02, 10:06 AM LVLF Thanks, Gizmogram, that is exactly the example I wish I would have found for this question. I just don't get it, but there must be something to it, the singing without stuttering, and the 'acting' voice/character.
12-02-02, 05:35 AM gizmogram When I saw this question posed, I immediately thought of Mel Tillis. I worked at a Casino years and years ago where he used to appear frequently, and he often spoke very candidly of his stuttering problem.
He still does stutter a little, even though he's overcome it to a great extent, but you certainly cannot tell in his songs.
I feel certain that when it comes to acting and singing, the concentration factor is in play.
08-29-03, 11:54 PM LaPisLaZuLi My older brother stuttered badly as a child, and as an adult he still stutters, and though it isn't as bad as it used to be, it is still there and very noticable.
My husband used to stutter as a kid. By the age of 10 he could barely talk his stuttering was so bad. He became very self conscious of it and started to withdraw socially.
Thank God for a speech therapist at the school he was going to. The first thing she asked him was about his music interests. She found out he loved Rock music and wanted to learn to play guitar.
She let him borrow an old guitar and taught him a few chords, then instructed him to carry it with him everywhere he went, and sing whatever it was that he needed to say.
*BINGO!* Within a year his stuttering had completely stopped, and he didn't have to sing. He never stutters at all now...and he plays a mean guitar! Wink
But on our second date, we were at a party, and he was getting ready to say something to a group of people, and when he drew his breath in, it made a certain sound...I can't describe it, you'd just have to hear it. I remembered my brother breathing like that before he'd start to talk and I blurted out, "Did you ever stutter?" He was amazed that I had asked and wondered how I knew.
MkStfnz's post is the first time I have ever read anything about the correlation between breathing and stuttering. There is a definate relation between the two.
I am not sure about my brother, but my husband has been tested (as an adult) for ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and his results were completely off the chart in many areas.
This also has something to do with his stuttering. He said that when he started singing what he had to say, as a kid he realized doing so gave his brain something else to think about so that it didn't race so far ahead in thought as to cause his tongue tangle up.
10-26-04, 12:49 PM carmen621 I just wanted to mention that the reason why the kid might not have stuttered while singing, is because it was something she was confident in. I believe that stuttering is caused by many things. Natural speech problems, low self-esteem, shyness, brain's quicker than the mouth. I used to stutter, and it was the last three reasons. Singing is something that flows, and you know the words. Talking usually means your thinking and comprehending, so it stalls it. My brother had it; he just had so much to say... Wink
10-26-04, 01:58 PM MommyTimesTwo I stuttered as a child for much the same reason as suggested above--the brain moving faster than the lips. I still stutter now, mostly only if I am excited or nervous. When I am very nervous, I do what is called "pushing", which is forcing the sounds past the "block" where they stall, so the speech sounds kind of like this (all caps words are those that come out forced): "SssO I WAANTed to DOOOo this with-without ssstuttering".
Basically I found as a kid that the more I was thinking about...I guess, the impression my speech might be making, the more I stuttered.
Anyway, my son was deaf until he was 18 months old and saw a speech therapist last year (he's 4 now) to learn how to talk. We saw that the more he concentrated on making the sounds correctly, the more he was stuttering the sounds. The therapist gave us a video to watch that suggested making funny voices (I can do a dead-on Stitch from "Lilo and Stitch" Wink) or singing to take the thought away from the individual sounds and more on the overall impression of what you're saying. This in combination with ignoring the stuttering when it does happen allows the child to think of the ideas they are trying to express, and not the individual sounds that are coming out, because, well it's hard to explain, but if I'm going to sing "Purple Rain", I'm thinking of the music and the tones of the songs, not the individual words. I'm thinking of the song, not the sounds of "Ah neh-veh wah-tehd too be youhr wee-kend lo-vehr", if you can see the difference I'm trying to express lol It's like, the big picture vrs the minutae.
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