Surviving a Stammer

Teaching children to embrace their differences

The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh is about an eleven-year-old called Billy Plimpton. He loves jokes and dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian but doesn’t think it’s possible because of his stammer. The story follows Billy as he tries to get rid of his stammer and struggles to find his way through his first term of secondary school. Billy comes to realise that maybe he can do more than he thinks, without having to get rid of his stammer at all.

My son Lenny has stammered since he was old enough to speak in sentences. As a toddler we thought nothing of the way he spoke; if anything, it was ‘cute’ and just seemed as though he had so much to say. As a parent, I’ve often thought back to when it changed from being a cute quirk to something that was challenging for him, differentiating him from other kids. We’ve had many theories about what - if anything - made his stammer stronger, ranging from our daughter finding her rather loud and dominant voice at age two, to having a teacher he was terrified of, to his best friend’s dad suddenly dying. All of these things happened around the same time and that’s when we started seeing his stammer become harder for him to cope with. He began fighting against his words and became increasingly frustrated with himself for not being able to speak the way he wanted to.

Over the years, he’s had some periods where his stammer vanishes completely and others where he finds it difficult to get to the end of a sentence. We’ve been to two different speech therapists, read numerous books and watched every documentary going and it seems as though no one really has any answers. No one is sure where the stammer comes from and there’s no clear road map through it. We’ve realised that it comes down to being kind to yourself and finding ways to manage, rather than identifying a ‘cure’. When Lenny realised that his stammer may be something he lives with forever, he was understandably disappointed, but quickly started finding ways of dealing with the situations that were the toughest.

You can imagine seeing your seven-year-old trying to explain to the old man in the corner shop that he has a stammer and needs people to be patient when he speaks, or seeing him perform in the school play at age nine, or listening to him at age ten talk to a speech therapist about how he feels when kids laugh at him. It’s been emotional! Watching him deal with all of these moments in such a composed and dignified way has made my heart sing. I’ve learnt a lot from my son, that’s for sure, and that’s why I decided to write The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh.

When Lenny started making jokes whenever his stammer was particularly strong, I enjoyed seeing him flex his comedic muscles and use humour to deal with something incredibly challenging for him. This, along with my experience in comedyas well as living with a stand-up comedian for the last twenty years - are what made up the story’s puzzle pieces. I wrote a chapter every day and read it out loud to Lenny before bed, who told me both when I’d missed the mark and when I had really understood what it was like for him. I obviously took a lot of things from our life and had to check that he was happy about how I was telling the story. As I wrote and rewrote, exaggerated and pushed the characters further, Billy slowly started to become someone entirely distinct from Lenny, someone with his own story and struggle.

Lenny is now sixteen years old and his stammer comes and goes, he mentions it occasionally in passing: “I wonder if I’ll stammer when I’m a Dad?” or “I’ve not noticed my stammer for a while Mum, have you?” or “I used to hate reading out loud, but now I don’t mind it.”

The difference when we talk about it now is the gentleness with which he treats himself. Lenny is no longer fighting it or embarrassed and I’m no longer scared for him, for what it may mean for him. We’ve all just accepted it as a very small part of his story.

Maybe that’s why this story arrived as an idea when it did. It was no longer defining him or us, and with that came a lightness that allowed me to see it for the unique - but hopefully universal - and inspiring story that it is.

HELEN RUTTER Author @helenrutteruk

www.helenrutter.com