Melissa is 3 years old who has a hard time talking with her firends. She often asks her parents " why does it get stuck when I talk ? " Adults also can have this type of bloking in speaking. For some people, the simple task of buying an ice cream cone, can truly be a nightmare… "For almost 20 years, I only ate vanilla ice cream", says Robert "I knew that I would inevitably block on the word "chocolate", so I would order vanilla… all the while, I really wanted chocolate ice cream!" Melissa and Robert are confronted with a problem commonly known as stuttering.

Contrary to popular belief, stuttering is not a contageous disease, or a nervous tic. It is a very complex speech problem that affects people who have a genetic predisposition to stutter. Stuttering emerges between 2 and 5 jears of age in a child who inherited a more fragile speech system.. It is perhaps this early occurance that causes many to wrongly believe that stuttering is caused by a childhood trauma, by tickling, by toilet training or by starting school.

In fact, regardless of their language, culture or status in society, boys are four times more likely to be affected by this communication problem than girls. In Quebec, this represents 4 to 6% of youth children, as well as 1% of adults. This makes for more than 55,000 youngsters and 45,000 adults who have stuttering problems.

The degree and severity of stuttering may vary. In some, the problem is manifested through repetitions of sounds, syllables, or words, prolongations of sounds, addition of little extra words and a lack of ease and fluency in speech production. Stuttering can cause a person to develop a whole set of accompanying behaviors such as, rapid, jerky movements of the eyes, nostrils, mouth or body.

Stuttering is a "mechanical" problem, a problem in the motor co-ordination of speech. As a result, people who stutter are sensitive to stress, fatigue, emotion, and excitation. On the other hand, It is also true that stuttering becomes milder be disappear when the person speaks "automatically " such as when he/she gets angry. The same happens when the person sings, changes his/her voice, recites something by heart, acts, talks in unison or talks to an animal. In fact using these situations consitute some of the means to facilitate fluent speech.

The Speech-Language Pathologist serves as a guide for a child or an adult who is learning to reprogram his/her speech in an easier manner. She also teaches those around the person who stutters techniques which facilitate more succesful communication interactions. In effect, the success of a communication exchange lies in the person who is expressing himself/herself being listened to with respect and understanding. Stuttering cannot be cured, but it can be controlled with the help of the Speech-Language Pathologist. The earlier the problem is detected, the better and quicker the results of therapeutic intervention. However, regardeless of age, it is never to late to undergo speech-language therapy.