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The Secret Sauce of Friends

You may be reading this because you know someone who stutters – perhaps a beloved member of your family, a colleague at your workplace, or a friend from your childhood. Maybe you are simply curious to learn more about stuttering and how it can impact a person’s life. Or perhaps still, you stutter, and you know firsthand the unique challenges of growing up speaking differently than others. Welcome to Friends.

Here are some fast facts:

  1. 1 in 100 people stutters. That’s millions of people worldwide.
  2. Stuttering affects the physical act of speech, but due to persistent stigma, stuttering is often wrongly linked to cognitive ability and intelligence. People who stutter have a wide range of intellectual capabilities, just like anyone else.
  3. Beneath the surface, many children and teens who stutter experience feelings of shame, inadequacy, and fear, even children as young as 3.
  4. Support and community are the single most important factors in building confidence and self-esteem in young people who stutter.

Imagine what a safe, accepting environment can do for young people who are uniquely vulnerable each time they speak. Think about what non-judgmental, unconditional support can do for those who feel alone and misunderstood. From a tentative smile, to several steps out of one’s comfort zone, we can tell you that the transformations are incredible. This is the magic that happens every year at Friends.

Friends is where young people who stutter and their families come together to provide support, empowerment, and education to one another. Our programs equip young people with the skills they need to advocate for themselves, feel empowered, excel in their careers, and live well with their stuttering. Our workshops for children, adolescents, parents and adults who stutter cover a wide range of supports, including:

✦  Self-advocacy and self-disclosure

✦  Thriving in middle school, high school, and college

✦  Overcoming bullying and teasing

✦  Achieving academic and career success

✦  Navigating employment challenges

✦  Mastering interview skills

✦  Embracing diversity in the workplace

✦  Educating peers in social, academic, and professional settings

We offer key supports for parents designed to help you advocate for your child, collaborate with schools to promote academic success, and feel more confident navigating conversations about stuttering with your child, family, school, and your wider community.

Thanks to our generous volunteers and donors, we have touched the lives of thousands of young people who stutter over the last 28 years.

Real-life changes witnessed at Friends

  • Feeling more confident about introducing themselves to a new person
  • Ordering food at a restaurant, without a parent or friend ordering for them
  • Interviewing for a dream job while advocating for themselves
  • Finding the strength to ask someone on a date without being stopped by fear of ridicule
  • Running for student office while bravely and proudly telling their class that they stutter
  • Learning that stuttering does not need to define the course of their lives

After participating in Friends events, young people shared:

  • They built strong relationships and a sense of community in a safe environment
  • Hearing and sharing personal stories increased self-­acceptance and acceptance of others
  • Living with stuttering can be hard, but the convention helped normalize stuttering
  • Collaborative learning facilitated personal growth
  • Communicative & cognitive changes persisted beyond the convention

Beyond the countless testimonials from kids, teens, adults, parents, and SLPs who have participated in Friends, research has also shown that children and teens who have attended a Friends convention have significantly less adverse reactions to speaking, and stuttering has significantly less negative impact on their lives (Gerlach et al., 2019).

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More than support

“I went to Friends because I wanted to figure out how to deal with my stuttering in the least painful way possible. Instead, Friends showed me how to wield my stuttering as a strength. Every year at Friends I hear strength and courage sound like a hundred different things, and I relearn that the best voices are not the ones that are untroubled but the ones that don’t stop trying.”

– Mary McLoughlin