Don’t let stammering hold you back
FOUNDER OF STUTTER UAE REVEALS HOW SHE OVERCAME CONDITION
Founder of Stutter UAE, Farah, an award-winning social activist, now is championing the cause of fellow stammerers by revealing how she overcame condition |
Farah Al Qaissieh was 12 when she realised that she was “different”. The Emirati girl was in grade 7 when one day at school, she was asked a question by her teacher, only to be interrupted when she began answering. Her rather impatient teacher told her to speak only when she can complete a sentence without faltering.
Yes, Farah stutters. Stuttering, also called stammering, is a speech disorder where an individual repeats or prolongs words, syllables, or phrases. Farah particularly struggles in her native Arabic language. However, she speaks fluent English.
“My younger brother also stammers. We were both bullied at school. It made us introverts and I was afraid to speak,” she said on the sidelines of a three-day UAE stuttering symposium held at the Hope Abilitation Medical Centre in Jumeirah recently.
“But when I joined college at Zayed University, I was forced to break my shackles. I had to give a lot of presentations and speeches in front of people. So I would start by saying, ‘I am Farah and I stutter’. That line still scares me today as much as it did back then because I am not only admitting it to myself, but also to the world,” she said.
According to the US-based Stuttering Foundation, more than ■ 70 million people around the world stammer. “If we go by this number, at least 100,000 people in the UAE have this speech disorder,” she said.
Stutter UAE
Farah, now 28, is an awardwinning social activist championing the cause of fellow stammerers. In 2013, she started Stutter UAE. The group today has over 2,000 members.
“Every month we meet and share our experiences and talk about our good and bad days.”
“People who stammer should look at it as just another accent — and not an impediment. My speech improved after I faced my fear and acknowledged that I had a problem.”
One of Farah’s achievements was hosting the region’s first stuttering awareness day in 2015. “But by far the biggest achievement for me was when I received the Abu Dhabi Speech impediment can be cured if treatment is given to a child in preschool years, according to retired professor of University of Vermont,
“In my career as a professor and a pathologist I have seen children suffer at a young age and become fluent in their speech later on — but after due training is given to them. My approach to treating individuals with the condition is a bit different. I train the parents first as a supporting environment is important,” he said.
“I teach parents to talk slowly, in a musical way, and put a lot of pauses in their sentence. Never interrupt a child who is talking. Instead listen to your child patiently. When you work with preschool children the main thing is that you make them feel good about themselves.”
Dr Barry Guitar.
Award — the highest civilian award given to a citizen in the UAE. When I walked up to the podium to accept it from His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, [Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces], it felt surreal. I did not think I would get this far,” she said.
Family and social support is critical said.
“I have found a loving partner who supports and understands me. When I am having a tough day with stuttering he asks me what is going on. That means a lot to me.
“My family has been extremely supportive. In the beginning they assumed I was shy or just teasing them when I could not get a sentence out, but they always made sure I was heard and they gave me their undivided attention,” she said.
Speaking to Gulf News at the symposium, Goncalo Leal of SpeechCare, a stuttering treatment centre in Lisbon, said research shows more men than women stammer worldwide (the ratio being 4:1).
“Five per cent of children in the world stammer at some point in their lives. We have seen more girls come out of it than boys,” said Leal, who was in the UAE to train speech pathologists on how to deal with children and adults with the speech impediment. to a stammerer, Farah