The Kid's Speech

Tell me what stammering is for you.

I...noticed...

I...

It's...when...you...

want to say something...

and it gets...

..and it gets stuck...in.

It's all there in your head, you're just like anybody else,

and then you open your mouth and suddenly...nothing comes out.

'And imagine that.'

You can't project anything of what you're like as a person.

I think that's the hardest, the feeling inside

that that child of yours must feel

lonely because of that stammer.

Getting close to your own child is very difficult and that has a big impact.

Speech expresses, you know, what you're thinking.

Your communication with your fellow man is such a basic thing.

You're in your own little world.

Cut off.

In 1993, Michael Palin gave his name to a pioneering centre

set up to help families with children who stammer.

My father had a very severe stammer, so that's why I got involved.

It is personal for him.

It's not just a charitable cause that he's interested in,

I think he really cares about it.

It was actually trying to sort my feelings out about him and what he was going through.

Right, let's cross over.

Over 100,000 families in Britain live with a child who stammers.

In a matter of days, three of them will enrol on an emotional and intensive course

designed to improve the children's speech

and their parents' understanding of stammering.

Wait there, Reg.

Ten-year-old Reggie is the eldest of six children,

but is the only one with a stammer.

It developed almost overnight when he was just two and a half.

Look, Mum.

Two pages on that one.

OK.

I don't talk

like other

ch-ch-ch-children.

Many people don't like

the way I talk.

How do you feel about it?

Bad.

-Oh.

-Very bad.

'I worry. I worry a lot.'

As a mum, you just want to do the best for him

and you want him to have a happy life, and have a full life

and do what he really wants to do.

And that's what we worry about, really. We don't want him to

not achieve his potential.

I need to talk

without...stammering.

-Is that hard?

-Yeah.

A bit hard, yeah.

Well, the other kids are all vying for my attention all the time.

They'll come home from school, "Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum! " and you don't know where to look

and it's noisy, and he'll just withdraw from that.

Sometimes he'll come in and try and ask a question

and won't be able to get it out, and he'll really struggle over,

you know, articulating what he wants to say.

And then he'll just give up.

He'll just say, "It doesn't matter."

-Can you imagine what it would feel like not to stammer?

-Yeah.

And I would really, really like that.

Why's that?

Because I'm a bit too embarrassed.

People have actually walked away from him while he's talking

and it breaks your heart, really.

Because he must...I always get upset.

But, you know,

things don't bother him.

If you ask him how he is, he always says, "Oh, I'm fine, I'm good."

He never kind of

let's on that he's bothered by anything, you know, he just gets on with things.

And it must really hurt him to

not have someone give him that attention and to listen to what he wants to say.

Got you.

So who do you support?

Chelsea, obviously.

Eleven-year-old William lives with his parents and two brothers.

He's just started secondary school and is becoming increasingly concerned about his stammer.

These are signed pictures from Frank Lampard.

These are all my trophies from football.

And I got voted by all of the team players to be Player of the Year.

And this especially is a quite good achievement,

I got it from the David Beckham Academy.

I did GCSE Foundation in Maths in Year six last year.

-No way!

-Yeah.

Wow, so you're really clever.

Thanks.

William likes everything just so.

Very sensible.

Very conscientious at school.

He can do so many things, but yet he's got a stammer.

He's a perfectionist and it's a major downfall for him and his personality.

It can occur sometimes if your brain is thinking...

No, no, no it's if your brain is thinking

of a more higher level than your mouth is.

I think really it's the future.

It's after school. It's the job interviews.

It's maybe being brushed aside cos there could be half a dozen candidates,

William could be the best one,

but because of the speech thing, you know, he could be put to the bottom of the pack.

And for, and for

the future I just want it to like completely not exist in my body.

-So where we off to?

-The beach

down...at the end of our drive.

Girls are far more likely to grow out of a stammer than boys,

but 14-year-old Bethan's speech

has got gradually worse since she began stammering at the age of five.

-What does it feel like when you try to speak?

-Must get that word out.

Must get that word out. Must get that word out. Yeah.

Yes, darling?

BENTHAN STAMMERS

An ice cream?

Which one would you like, sweetheart?

Would you like to point it out to me? Would that be easier for you?

Right, which one do you want then?

Show me which one you want.

You would like an Aero Snowball, yes?

-Please.

-Say that for me.

Aero Snowball.

-Well, done.

-Snowball.

Thank you.

She used to have a very advanced vocabulary

and she used to quote poems to you.

When she was two she said the Owl and the Pussycat all the way through.

And she just remembered so many things from her books, and used to keep going on and on about them.

Now I can't say...what I...want

to say and some children take the Mickey.

-Children take the Mickey out of you?

-Yeah.

I worry about her not having any friends.

I worry about her not interacting.

'I worry that she won't find a husband.'

'All the nice things that I've had in life, she might not be able to have the same.'

Yeah.

There is no magic cure for a stammer, but there are ways of controlling it.

At the UK's largest centre for stammering children,

they are dedicated to developing these techniques.

I've never been able to talk about my father's stammer with him,

it was just something that was like a curse

that we couldn't really talk about, and if you talked about it, it was just rubbing salt in the wounds.

And here people are actually going to try and help children like my dad.

We run these courses. They run for two weeks and we have six children and their parents come,

and they come from all over the country.

William's stammering, he needs to go to the Michael Palin Centre.

-And how are you feeling about going on this course?

-Excited.

Reggie, William, Bethan and their parents are all travelling to London.

After years of frustration, this course is often seen as

the last chance for families to help their child's speech improve.

I think a lot of them are at their wits' end.

You know, stammering is something a lot of young children grow out of,

and for many years the parents will have their fingers crossed thinking,

you know, four out of five children grow out of this, hopefully my child will be in that statistic.

But by the time they get to the sort of late primary school years,

the likelihood has diminished a lot, in terms of it just naturally going away.

Where's it all gonna end?

It's a severe stammer

and he's got secondary school which is a big jump, you know.

Is it going to be like throwing him to the lions?

Till you've lived closely with that, you can never appreciate how

it dictates someone's life and the people around them.

And we have a lot of hopes on this course, because we just don't know where to go after that.

Mmm.

We really appreciate the fact that you're all here in such good time.

What we're going to do is leave the children in here now

and we're going to take the parents through to the other side.

It isn't just the kids who are starting therapy,

the parents are too.

In separate rooms both the parents and children begin to open up about their fears and frustrations.

It's not just about fluency, the course is designed to get to the

heart of the difficult emotions that accompany the condition.

It's time for everyone to face the stammer head on.

Welcome everybody to our group.

We're going to have loads of fun. You all do have a stammer, that's why you're here.

And this is a place where it's OK to stammer, where it actually really doesn't matter at all.

What we're going to do now is have a little bit of discussion time

about why we involve parents, about why you think you're here.

There's always a certain amount of anxiety when you start on a course like that.

And particularly those group environments when everybody's got to get involved.

And I remember my head dropped and I was thinking, "Oh, you've got to talk to the person next to you

-"and find out three things." And I'm thinking...

-Oh, yeah.

"Oh, God!" You know.

And I'm thinking, "Oh, no, here we go, have we got two weeks of this?"

I think we really need to go back to basics, and I don't think you could

envisage what is involved in that unless both parents are here.

So did you think, Paul, when they said to you initially, you're both coming?

Well, happy, because I thought, "Brilliant, William needs this opportunity."

-You're shaking your head.

-Because you went, "What do I have to come for?"

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

-Let me finish. Let me finish.

-"Does it really need both of us?"

Yeah, 100% and I said, you know, my initial thought was brilliant for Wills and I just thought,

"Well, what am I going to be doing?"

I presumed we were gonna be standing at the back, watching 'em.

You know, and I'm thinking, "Oh, my God, how boring's this going to be?"

I'm not sure whether this is true or not, but I think it makes you examine

the interaction between each other and how that affects the environment your child is in.

You're not here because you've done something or are doing something that is unhelpful.

It's not about your styles of parenting and things like that.

The parent can't cause stammering.

Course you worry that it's your fault.

There's a certain amount of guilt about,

we didn't do enough at the beginning

and if we had nipped it in the bud, maybe he wouldn't be as bad now.

When he was quite young I used to think maybe we've made this happen.

We thought, oh, we shouldn't have

surrounded her with cotton wool and looked after her so much.

We should have allowed her to practise more with children of her age

and then perhaps it wouldn't have been as hard.

If you think back there were some other things said to us which

we now know are daft, but things like, he didn't eat the right food.

I remember I asked my mother about it.

And she just said, she came out with this wonderful line which I've never forgotten.

She said, "Oh, yes, a maid jumped out on him when he was very young."

I mean, you know, whatever that meant,

whatever dark euphemisms were there, I just don't know.

But that was all I was ever told in terms of the cause of his stammer.

There are myths out there that don't get dispelled.

And unfortunately something like The King's Speech, you know, the myth that was perpetuated by that film

was something about King George VI's stammer being linked to his experiences as a child.

And that's not factual, that's not what we know from the research that's happening.

We know it's something to do with the brain function and the wiring in the brain,

it's not about your parent styles or parenting and things like that.

New research shows that some children are born with a genetic vulnerability to stammer.

This can also be exacerbated

by the child's emotional state and their environment.

This is why the whole family is involved.

Parents may not be the direct cause, but they can be part of the solution.

Do any of you get a bit nervous if you think you're going to stammer? Does that ever happen?

Very tense...It gets quite tense.

I'm a bit like stressed and frustrated.

It makes me feel a bit ang...

..angry.

By lunchtime it's already clear that some children are finding it harder to join in than others.

Have you had a good morning, Reg?

Doesn't want to mix with anybody.

He won't join in.

Yeah. He's just on the outside all the time. Look at him.

Stammering is very overtly something that's happening with the mouth,

but it has a knock-on effect

on their total communication, but also on their participation in life, very often.

-All right?

-Yep.

Good boy. Proud of you.

And that's a large part, I think, of the problem of stammering.

You get inhibited. You lose confidence.

It's the feeling you're on your own, lonely.

And, of course, it's not a problem just for children,

it's a problem for all the family.

Everyone has to relate to it in some way.

You know, and I think about my father, poor guy, had a stammer,

but my mother, you know, all her life married to this man

who couldn't always say what he wanted to say,

going at a different pace from everybody else.

I don't remember having sat down with him and had a good old chat about whatever.

I just don't remember it.

His childhood will be over and we'll never really engage him as much as we wanted him to.

I'd have wanted him to just join in and get to know him, and

I know it sounds ridiculous, like a father to a son.

For some of these children they will be going a bit

quieter on their parents naturally, but throw the stammer into the mix.

I mean, a lot of us don't know what's going on in our kids' heads,

but for these parents there's an extra layer to that.

He'll always take himself off. He likes to be on his own.

If he's not on the computer, he'll be up in his room reading a book.

He really likes to kind of

keep away.

Sometimes it's difficult to get him out of that world.

I've got...

three or...

..many here. This is...

..a Spinosaurus.

This is an Edmontosaurus.

This...is...a T-rex.

So tell me, Reggie, how do you know so much about dinosaurs?

Because...

of all of...

them books over there.

Do you like reading?

Yeah, I love reading.

He's got such a lot to say, he really has.

He's so intelligent. And when you do have a conversation with him, he blows you away.

You know, but it takes so long for him to do it, because he doesn't have

the tools to be able to tell people, and that's what's really frustrating.

It's an important day in the children's group,

as the therapists introduce one of their key weapons, code name Tarzan.

Tarzan was

running

towards the jungle.

So what everybody should have on their screen is Kevin, who's one of the therapists in the team,

and he's reading the passage in a certain way.

OK? It's called smooth, slow speech.

Mastering slow speech is the first lesson in fluency.

If they can learn to flow one word into the next, they'll have less chance of stammering.

For many kids, this task can immediately improve their speech.

They're really slowing down their own rate,

feeling and experiencing what happens when they do that.

And typically what happens is that they are fluent.

Tarzan knew that...he knew no fear.

When something rose up.

Where do you normally stammer on a word?

-The start.

-Mmm hmmm.

So if you say two words together, how many chances have you got to stammer?

-Less chance.

-Yeah.

Tarzan...

What's it like seeing her speak fluently?

It's lovely, really lovely.

It's a normal 14-year-old,

but you can't get too excited cos you know it's not going to last for long.

The children have the techniques, they can be extremely fluent,

and then they stop using them and they're stammering as much as before.

It's still, to them, not their normal way of speaking.

And most of us just want to stop doing something that doesn't feel normal

and just become ourselves again.

And even though it's the trade-off between stammering and fluency, most children would

rather just oh, stop that now, just talk normally, which is stammering.

It's like when I was a child and, you know, you were supposed to say

water with a T and you know it's the right way to say it,

but you don't always say it like that, do you?

So I suppose that's what he's like with his speaking.

-Wa'er.

-And Mallorca.

But I suppose that's where our frustrations come, because we have seen the fluent Bethan

and then you get a glimpse of it and then it disappears.

Was that two sentences or three?

-Three.

-Three, OK. Shall we do another three?

-OK, yes.

I have gone through phases of going, "Bethan, you know how to do this,

"they've taught you, why can't you do it?"

Technique alone won't beat the stammer.

For Bethan to take a step forward, Alison will have to take a step back.

Bethan is 14 now and she's not going to be still reminding her to do something about her speech

when she's 24, so there should be some sense of moving towards Bethan taking responsibility.

Despite outwardly stammering less than the other kids,

William is particularly troubled by his imperfect speech.

-Oh, what a goal!

-One mum did say to me, your son seems fine.

-Yeah.

And then I sort of said to him how much he worries about his stammer

and different things that he'd said to me about, "I hate it so much.

"I'm so stupid I can't even say my name."

And it just makes you realise how it affects his life so much.

Most dogs have one name but Pooch had three.

He gets very upset with himself, you know, cos he knows that it's him to blame.

-Well, he thinks it's him to blame.

-Can I give you a tick?

-I think so.

Yeah, he's not happy if he gets nine out of ten, you know,

in a classroom, so not to be able to get ten out of ten from his

own speech, for William

-is not good enough.

-Can I give you a tick? Yeah.

I have to always do it perfectly.

Do you notice the things that you weren't pleased with more?

Yeah, I do cos I thought on the reading I did rubbish.

And then are you more likely to stammer or less likely to stammer?

-When I get tense?

-yeah.

-Yeah, more.

-You're more likely to stammer.

-Yeah.

-So there's a bit of a vicious circle going on there, isn't there?

-Yeah.

It's a problem in that the more he wants to be fluent, the more he puts

pressure on himself to be fluent, the more likely he is to stammer.

So with your speech, instead of aiming for perfect, what shall we aim for?

I'd say almost or nearly.

Almost is good enough?

So that means that there's a bit of room...

-For improvement.

-Uh-huh.

And a little bit of room for a little few stammers and could be OK?

Yeah.

When that sunk in, for me, that was a bit of a moment.

You think, wow, I know where William is, I know where he's coming from.

I can sort of see how it's affected him more now.

If parents are describing their child as perfectionist,

what we know about personality is it's partly to do with what you

inherit and partly to do with the environment you're in.

So if a parent's saying that the child's a perfectionist,

there's a strong chance that one of the parents'll be a perfectionist.

Where do you think he gets his perfectionism from?

His mum...

110%.

-Maybe.

-There's no question.

And I think it's interesting that Paul said it was Ann,

because I think if you look at Paul you can see there are similar tendencies there too.

We call you Perfect Paul.

-I was born that way and strive for perfection.

-I guess, no, we're both a bit like it.

At the end of the first week, the parents are set their toughest task to date,

which is designed to help them empathise with their child.

They must mimic their stammer.

What we would like you to do

is to actually have a go at doing that stammering. OK?

So thinking about your own child, what happens to the sounds he's trying to say,

stammering in the way your child does. OK?

In the group where they stammer to each other is a real key one.

It's very uncomfortable and it's very revealing.

C...

C...C...

Can I...Can I have a cake?

Bethan is my name.

I live in Conway.

This is about sort of something to do with experiencing, getting into your child's shoes and

feeling what it feels like to be putting that effort into speaking.

Mum. Mum.

Mum.

Mum.

Mum.

Right, so how was that?

Let me hear from you.

Hard. Embarrassing.

-OK.

-In my mind it's sort of taking the Mick out of him, really.

And, for me, that's very difficult.

OK. OK.

-That was quite hard, that.

-Yeah.

-They're having to really put

themselves out in the front line every day, you know,

and we're feeling emotional doing it for ten minutes.

They've been doing it for years, you know.

That's the most powerful thing so far in this course for me.

I put myself in his situation and I remember how difficult it is

when he stutters, you know, out in the real world.

OK.

For me, that two minutes brought the whole lot of it

come in one go like that.

It's very difficult to stay focused.

You know what I mean? It's very upsetting,

but the poor little bastard's put up with this for five years.

D'you know what I mean?

-Mmm. Oh.

-It's difficult.

It upsets me now, really, thinking about it,

cos it was all years and years of

seeing, you know, your little boy struggle,

that's when it all started coming home and started making sense.

And all the times I've given him a hard time or got frustrated,

and it all kind of like came to me all at that moment, really.

With him I think I'm a lot more, you know, softer.

Yeah, I reckon that's the word.

Something I don't find that easy anyway.

Did you feel in a way any closer to him after that?

Yeah.

Definitely. Definitely.

We share something.

They're there because of their children, I'm there because of my dad.

And I will often wonder, if he were still alive, whether I would

now be able to say to him, you know, I've learnt a bit about stammering, tell me what it was all about.

So in a way I feel closer to him.

But I just feel sad that he

missed out, because I think that he would have been a happier man.

It's halfway through the course and each of the families is noticing signs of progress.

Oh, yeah.

SMOOTHLY: Tarzan was running...

towards the jungle.

The homework is very helpful.

My trousers are too tight.

It was an agreeable meal.

Pay the gas bill.

The Titanic exhibition really moved me.

And how do you think your stammer's been?

It has been a lot better.

Yeah, it certainly sounds great today. Well done.

-Good.

-Thank you, Mum.

Bethan has been working hard on her homework exercises.

-Have you had a nice day?

-I have, yes.

There's a little bench over there.

With Alison leaving Bethan to take responsibility for her own speech,

they've both seen a big improvement.

-Do you think you're showing any progress?

-Yep.

Like what?

I've learnt to handle the word gorilla.

-Cos you were worried about saying gorilla last night, weren't you?

-Yes.

Oh, that's a good thing. And how did you do that?

Doing the soft start.

Ah, very good.

I have to keep remembering that it's her stammer, it's not mine

and she is old enough to do something about it.

It's her choice and it's her life, so I have to try and accept that.

Gorilla.

There we are, once you put a soft start in it.

-Gorilla.

-Yeah, that's better, wasn't it?

-Yeah, it was.

-Yeah.

-So you're glad you're here?

-Yes, I am.

There we go. Good.

'I understand it more and I understand Bethan more.'

I just accept her for who she is, really.

Yeah.

She's grown up a lot.

'She's a very confident 14-year-old.'

Doesn't that help? It does, doesn't it?

Yes, it did.

And that's nice.

Yep.

Today a high-profile visitor, who knows exactly

what the families are going through, comes to the centre.

The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, has battled with a stammer throughout his career,

but has only recently begun to talk publicly about it.

Reggie, nice to meet you. Hi there.

-Hi.

-Hi there, William. Hello.

Right, I'm taking my jacket off, it's a bit warm in here.

You may not know it, but I've always had a stammer as well, and maybe you had that explained,

but I'm also a politician.

I've been talking to the TV and radio all day so far.

I'm a bit further down the track than you guys, cos you're only starting out on your course,

but the key thing is just to stick with it.

That one visit that we had that was the one who gave me most hope.

Never, ever realised that Ed Balls had a stammer.

It amazed me, cos, obviously, I've seen you on TV, you know.

-Sometimes people write about me saying, that he's a cured stammerer. He used to have a stammer.

-And you have to say to people, never, ever...

-No.

-stop.

I can't start a sentence with an H, it's just a killer.

And therefore if I've ever got to do a speech or anything in public,

if I've got to read it out, they've got to be my words,

cos there's certain sentences I'll never be able to start, certain consonants whatever.

The only thing which is really hard is the Bible, cos you can't rewrite it.

It showed to me that, you know, my fear for William

is that he's very intelligent, he is a perfectionist, but would his stammer get in the way of

what could be a career for him in whatever path he takes.

Ready, set, go.

I think that was probably a turning point for me.

A real weight had been lifted off my shoulders. You know what?

This isn't as bad as maybe I thought it was.

Part of what one hopes that the stammering centre can do, indeed any form of addressing stammering,

is to demystify it and say it does happen to people.

It happens to quite a lot of people. It happens to, you know, Winston Churchill, Ed Balls, whoever.

But if you say, well I've got lots of other people who stammer, and actually I've got lots of things

I'm interested in, and I can play football really well, so up yours, mate.

Ah, very good.

Speaking to others within the safety of a group is one thing,

but after nine days working on their confidence,

the children must summon all their courage to talk to strangers on the street.

For Reggie this means coming out of his shell.

What we were hoping to see is him interacting more, communicating more

with more eye contact, rather than focusing on being more fluent.

-Is that OK?

-That's fine.

-We've only got two questions.

-OK.

-Yeah.

-Do you know what stammering is?

-Oh, yes.

-Do you have a...j-job?

Yes.

OK. All right.

You look at the person when you're asking it.

-Yeah.

-OK?

-Yeah.

-Can you do that?

-Yeah.

-OK.

-Eye contact this time.

-Yeah.

Do you know what stammering is?

Can you explain to me?

It...is when people have pro...

have pro...have pro...have pro...

have problems with their t-t... with their talking.

OK. Thank you.

-OK.

-Thank you.

-Well done.

Well done, Reggie. You kept going.

OK? And what I'm really impressed with, you got it out.

Yeah, well done, Reggie.

-And did anybody notice anything else about his eye contact?

-Yep.

-What?

He looked up most of the time.

Well, there was more eye contact than the two times before, Reggie.

High five, Reggie.

-Yeah. Cool as a cucumber.

-Very. Yeah, exactly, very confident.

It's been a really good week for Reggie.

I think he's doing amazingly and he is very much a part of the group, you know.

I'm just seeing him coming back into the fold of the family just a little bit more.

And for me, if this two weeks achieves that that's a massive thing for me.

-Yeah, he's joining in a little bit more. That's a big step.

-Coming into the fold of the family.

Mmm.

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday dear Reggie

# Happy birthday to you. #

Wow, these look good, Reg.

He is a man now. He's 11, aren't you?

-Yep.

-My little man. My big man.

-There's one more present here.

-Look, Reg, look.

-I want you to open it.

-Reg, this is for you.

Read it out.

Wowee! Look.

Yeah, happy birthday Reggie, you're going on a special behind-the-scenes

-tour of the Palaeontology Department at the Natural History Museum. You're a lucky boy.

-Yeah!

-You're a lucky boy, aren't you?

-Yay!

And that's all we wanted, for him to react with his brother and sisters and have a normal family life.

And he's really starting to do that.

We've just seen him blossom.

SLOWLY: Hello, Reggie, where are we going?

SMOOTHLY: To the Natural History Museum.

Oh, great.

SLOWLY: I think we'll see some dinosaurs.

Ooh, we're nearly there. It's, um, er...over here, I think.

-Hello, Reggie, how's it going?

-Good.

-I'm Tim.

-You're a real life palaeontologist.

-Indeed, in the flesh.

-Hello.

-Hi.

-Hi.

-How's it going?

-Good, thank you.

-Hi.

-Excited.

-So I hear dinosaurs are your favourite thing.

-Yeah.

-Which dinosaur's your favourite?

My favourite one is baryonyx.

What do you know about baryonyx?

SLOWLY, SMOOTHLY: That it was found in the 1980s by Bill Walker.

Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing knowledge.

I'm really impressed. D'you want to go and see some specimens? Yeah?

Yeah.

-What do you think this is?

-A sauropod leg.

-Yep, absolutely it.

It is Centrosaurus.

-Wow!

-Is that right?

-Yeah, it is right. I'm really impressed.

-I think you can lead the rest of the tour now.

-Yeah.

Well, we were never more proud of him than when he

-started trading knowledge with the gentleman at the Natural History Museum, it just blew us away.

-Yeah.

I think it blew him away as well.

But can you tell me which part of the dinosaur that is?

The hip.

Oh, excellent. Yeah.

-You're absolutely right.

-Oh, yeah.

So there we go. But do you know what this claw was used for?

For hooking fish.

-Yeah, fantastic. Yeah.

-Nothing you can get past him, is there?

No. You're amazing.

I recall him standing there almost like some sort of professor with his hands on his hips talking to,

you know, the palaeontologist almost on a level, and we were stood back.

So what was the largest land carnivore ever to have lived?

-Spinosaurus.

-Absolutely right. Wow!

He would never have done things like that before.

That makes us proud, doesn't it?

-He's a unique little boy.

-Mmm.

You having a good birthday, boy?

Yep.

These are individual children, all with their

different talents, abilities, needs, feelings, emotions, it's all there, like in all of us.

And in some ways the idea that stammerers can't talk, therefore you

shouldn't talk to them, and that's sort of making it more difficult for them by asking them questions,

seems to me something we've really got to get over.

You've gotta talk to stammerers.

The course is coming to an end, but there's just time for one final visitor to join the parents' group.

Hello. Hello everyone. Hello.

To go in a room and talk to the parents there, and you're right down

to the very cutting edge of sort of their feelings, their emotions.

It's just been so nice to be able to talk to each other

-and to find a solution for ourselves.

-Yeah.

Is there anything that you learnt about how to

deal with your children's stammer here that you didn't know before?

-Just about everything.

-Oh, yeah, OK. All right.

Fair.

It's about

the centre enabling their children to do something that they

were at times worried they would never be able to do...

You know,

that's very moving.

Hello?

-Hello.

-Hello there.

Hi. Hi. Do come on in.

Will, I saw your hand go up first, so I'm choosing you.

Before they leave for home, the children are asked to speak in front of an audience,

something they'd have found almost impossible to do two weeks earlier.

I like playing sports.

I play sports a lot.

-Do you think you're more OK with stammering now?

-Definitely. Yeah.

-Cos you wouldn't have said that before the course.

-No. No.

I would have just got depressed.

-Yeah.

-So d'you feel depressed now?

-No.

-Well, done.

-APPLAUSE

Bethan.

Well, I'm going...to talk about ...the Titanic.

How did you feel after you finished the course?

Well, I felt a lot more confident.

Well, done, Bethan.

Reggie, up you come.

Dinosaurs were reptiles that lived millions...of years...ago.

-Do you feel different now you've finished the course at all?

-Yeah.

In what way?

Because I am better at talking.

Thank you, Reggie, well done.

Give yourselves a round of applause. Very, very well done.

How does that make you feel?

Very good.

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