“It tries to make me feel embarrassed.” That’s what Djibril Thuo (11 years old) says about his stuttering. He tries to avoid difficult words so that it looks like he is speaking fluently.
I have never met Djibril in real life. Since the Corona virus outbreak, it’s only possible to treat people online in our practice for Speech therapy and Stuttering. In the first session we talked a little about stuttering and how it feels for him. I asked him if he could make a creation of how his stutter looks like. In the second session he showed me through the camera what he had made. First I was surprised when I saw it: I had no idea how creative he is in drawing at his age. He immediately said: ‘Maybe you think that I have just put some lines on a paper, but that’s not it. It’s how I want my speaking to be: red means confident, I want to feel confident. Blue means that I want to feel calm when I speak. Yellow means happy and proud, I want to feel proud when I speak. Green: I just like this color, it’s given me support.’
I was moved by how he gave words to his painting and how he already knew what’s needed for him to speak freely. His parents were also surprised about how he opened up about his stuttering. When at the end of this session the little brother, Giovanni Thuo (9 years), turned his head in front of the camera and said: “thank you for helping my brother”. Gratefull to see what still can happen in this period with online speechtherapy. Up to the next session.