Isabelle's school stammering presentation

Image

Caption

Isabelle, and slides from her presentation

10-year-old Isabelle Petty tells us how she's grown in confidence with her stammer, and how she raised stammering awareness in a school assembly.

My name is Isabelle and I have a stammer. 

I have lots of support from both my mum and also my speech and language therapist, who have both helped me to know that I have fantastic communication skills and vocabulary, and that my speech just sometimes gets stuck. It sometimes feels like I have a switch that I can't control. Sometimes I have no trouble speaking and other times I do. 

I used to get really upset because I used to think that I couldn't talk properly. Sometimes I even wished I never had one because it used to really frustrate me. I used to think that I was weird for it but now I just think that people can wait for me to finish. If they don't want to then that is disrespectful. I am me and I really don't care what people want to think anymore.  

I was so very proud of myself for wanting to spread awareness and also educate other people about it.

In November 2021, I made a PowerPoint presentation with the help of my therapist and presented it to the whole of my primary school in an assembly. I told everyone what a stammer is and how I and other people who stammer would like to be treated, and I think I absolutely smashed it. I was so very proud of myself for wanting to spread awareness and also educate other people about it.

Here are the slides from my presentation. You can click or tap left and right to scroll through them.