"An article in the paper today Genes, not emotions, may cause stuttering challenges the view that people stutter because they've been emotionally damaged during childhood."

I stuttered *terribly* as a child, freda, as did my father. I grew up knowing a man who never stuttered though. At 19 he decided that if he didn't work out how to talk without a stutter, his chances of finding a lady would be slimmed down a bit. ;0)

So he began to teach himself how to breathe.

When I was a little girl he taught me how to do it too, and he'd sit me down in front of him patiently going through it all with me. He taught me which letters to avoid starting a sentence with, he taught me to take a short breath, just before I started to speak and he taught me to slow down, to stop gabbling.

It took us a few years, but we got there, together. Now I have no stutter that people would notice, although the darn word 'medieval' still gets me to this day and I have to take that breath then let the word out slowly.

My daughter started to stutter around the age of 4, but she grew out of it very fast. The nurse told me it was because her mind thought of the words faster than her mouth could get them out, so they'd get kind of 'backed up'...Not sure about that, but thankfully, she outgrew it...and my son has never stuttered at all.