A comment “Common, isn’t it just a natural urge to laugh when you see someone speaking like p.p.p…? With organisations like TISA and their PILs, laughing may not be ‘politically correct’ but then who can deny that natural urge to laugh?” by someone agonised me and left me thinking. Questions like ‘Is stammering inherently a funny disorder? Does it trigger a natural laugh? came to my mind. Of course this position doesn’t discount the suffering associated stammering and that perhaps is a separate issue. How to resolve this? I have been observing my 4 year old son and I see positive feelings like love and affection comes naturally to him. However at the same time negative feelings like jealousy and anger (and sadly also violence sometimes!) also come equally naturally to him. So I decided to watch his reactions while he talks with a CWS whose speech has typical repetition (p.p.p…) form of stammering. To my surprise I found my son listening to him without an iota of laughter and with complete patience till CWS completed his sentence and then only responding to what CWS spoke rather than how he spoke. Moreover, my son has never mentiond about stuttered speech of his CWS friend even once to me or my wife. It seems stammering is not even worth noticing for him and he is perhaps taking it as a part of diverse, plural world. The way he talks with his CWS friends is like any mature person or an SLP who has not only read but also digested “tips for speaking with someone who stutters”! There is no way he can acquire these listening traits as he is too young to understand all that. Therefore, I have a reason to believe that his behaviour is in fact natural and on the other hand, laughing and ridiculing that PWS experience is perhaps acquired. Comments welcome :-)
Akash
