Review: Can I Tell You About Stammering? A guide for friends, family and professionals

How to help children overcome a stammer

This highly readable and carefully constructed book uses the voice of an 11-year-old boy, Harry, to talk about stammering. Children's voices can lack authenticity, but here it has a lightness of touch while dealing with varied information and difficult emotions. The issues resonate with my clinical and research work and I think they are relevant to many children and young people who stammer.

The topics are divided into short chapters that can be discussed separately. There are also four pages of recommended reading, websites and addresses of various organisations.

Harry introduces his older brother Peter, who also stammers, and talks about ways to hide both overt and covert stammering. This includes tricks, which can help in the short-term, but in the long-term can lead to increased avoidance and fear. It is useful to have this issue discussed because people often think that avoidance tactics or tricks are a good idea, not realising how much of a person's stammering goes on inside through thoughts, fears, shame and embarrassment. It takes tremendous courage to be open about stammering, and to manage without habitually using tricks and crutches; the book identifies how adults and peers can help in this process.