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Today marks the first day of Stuttering Awareness Week, this week all posts will be related to stuttering in order to spread awareness! 

What is stuttering?

Stuttering affects the fluency of speech. It begins during childhood and, in some cases, lasts throughout life. The disorder is characterized by disruptions in the production of speech sounds, also called “disfluencies.” Most people produce brief disfluencies from time to time. For instance, some words are repeated and others are preceded by “um” or “uh.” Disfluencies are not necessarily a problem; however, they can impede communication when a person produces too many of them.

In more cases than not, stuttering has an impact on an individuals daily activities. [For some people, communication difficulties only happen during specific activities, for example, talking on the telephone or talking before large groups. For most others, however, communication difficulties occur across a number of activities at home, school, or work. Some individuals who stutter avoid social situations and/or participation in social activities.  These individuals often care about what others will think about their dysfluent speech and try to hide it.  Some individuals avoid socialization/speaking, rearrange words in sentences, and/or pretend that they forgot what they wanted to say.