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Dear Sis,

I know that we haven’t talked as often on the phone as we would like to since your husband got transferred, so I thought I would write this letter to see how things have been going with you.  How do you and your family like your new house?  Mom showed me some pictures… It looks beautiful.  I hope that Katherine and I will be able to come visit you all really soon.  Katherine has some great pictures from our wedding that she is going to send you.  There are some awesome pictures of Adam in his little tux… He was the best ring bearer of all time.

Alright, I am going to cut to the chase about why I am truly writing this letter.  Mom said you have been worried about Adam because he has been stuttering, showing a lot of the same symptoms that I did when I was his age.  I know that I am the younger brother, but I want to try to offer you some heartfelt advice about some steps that you may want to take with Adam.  It has taken me 24 years to realize the true effect that stuttering has had on my life.  As a younger child and teen, I tried to bury all of my feelings inside about how my stuttering problem made me feel.  I am not trying to scare you about your son’s situation, but I am going to be honest with you, stuttering can totally alter one’s self-image.  I am definitely not the only one that feels this way.  I found a digital movie made by a young woman that has a stuttering sister.  The movie describes how the development of her self-image was so much different than her sister’s, all stemming from her sister’s stuttering and its harsh repercussions.  The results of stuttering can cut deep to a person’s soul if the appropriate steps are not taken early enough. 

Since my childhood, I possessed the most negative self-image imaginable, and at this age, I am still battling the horrific ramifications of stuttering.  The other day, I was looking through my drawer, and I found this poem I had written a couple months before my wedding.  The poem was filled with my emotional despair as I considered how stuttering made me feel.  Although there are times when those negative emotions still emerge, I have come such a long way since that poem was written, mainly because of Katherine.  I thank God everyday for Katherine because she has been a rock for me…. My wife has greatly helped me battle this awful self-concept.  She was able to look into my soul and see the torture that I faced daily due to my stuttering.  I actually found a couple of her journal entries in her nightstand.  Reading those made me cry because I realized that she could see the pain in me.  After our wedding, she suggested that I see a psychologist to battle the stuttering issues that have haunted me for years.  My continued therapy sessions have helped tremendously.  Dr. Samson actually recorded our first session together and gave me a transcript of that session so I could actually see the progress I have made over the past several months.  I can definitely see how far that I have come. 

The road to positive self-esteem is a truly hard road to take alone if you are a stutter.  I don’t want my nephew to suffer my fate.  He is still so young and there are so many things that can be done to intervene before negative self-image begins to consume his life.  I love Mom to death, but I wish that she would have let me continue to see a speech pathologist when I was Adam’s age.  She felt like there wasn’t any improvement, but that was only after a few weeks.  Therapy takes time and patience.  Anyway, there is a really good speech pathologist that I heard about.  She not only specializes in fluency disorders, but she is also really personable and good with children.  Here is the link to her webliography (http://mupfc.marshall.edu/~stalnaker14/webliography.htm) so you can get a little bit more information about her interests, and she also has some good links about stuttering on there as well.  I also want you to view her PowerPoint on stuttering and they way it can ultimately affect self image.  Here is that internet site: http://mupfc.marshall.edu/~stalnaker14/The%20Life%20of%20a%20Stutterer.ppt 

Kelly, I really hope that you take this letter to heart.  Get Adam enrolled with a speech therapist that will not only help him improve his speech, but one that will also target the emotional correlations of stuttering.  There is plenty of time to do this before it is too late.  If you have any questions about anything, just give me a call.  I know what Adam is going through, and I am here to help in whatever way I can.