Neglected Education:  No one need hesitate to place himself under our instruction on account of neglected education or advanced age.  All embarrassments are carefully avoided.  Scores of backward pupils, who do not even know how to read or write, enter every year, and are entirely and permanently cured by the Unit Method.

CHAPTER VIII

A HEART-TO-HEART TALK WITH PARENTS

If you are the mother or father of a child who stammers, you should first of all read Chapters IX to XIV, inclusive, in Part Two of this book.  These chapters deal with the speech disorders of children from before the first spoken word up until the age of 21, when structurally as well as legally the mind and body of the infant merge into that of the adult.

No mother or father can understand their child’s disorder without having read these Chapters.  To fail to understand is to multiply the chance for error in deciding what to do.  Therefore, I repeat, if you are the mother or father of a boy or girl who stammers, read chapters on Child Stammering before you go further.

There are three mistaken beliefs in the minds of many parents of stammering children which must be rooted out before the child will have an opportunity to be cured of his trouble.

These beliefs are: 

    1—­That the child will outgrow his trouble and therefore need
       only be permitted to “grow older,” at which tune the trouble
       will disappear.
    2—­That the child could stop stammering if he would try—­that
       the trouble is but a malicious habit of the child’s, which
       he could put away from him if he would.
    3—­That the child’s trouble is incurable and that nothing can
       be done for him.

All of these beliefs are entirely fallacious and based purely upon ignorance of the cause and progress of the child’s trouble.  There is not the slightest scientific foundation for them, they are not beliefs based on facts or upon experience—­yet in many homes, they constitute the chief obstacle between the stammering child and his complete and permanent cure.

As long as you believe that your child will out-grow his or her trouble, you take no steps to have the disorder eradicated.

What happens?

The trouble becomes worse from month to month and from year to year, until in many cases where the “outgrowing belief” persists, the trouble passes into a chronic and incurable stage and the stammering child becomes the stammering man or woman, condemned to go through life under a handicap almost too great to bear.

Write it on your heart that your child will not outgrow his trouble.  Ponder over the information given in the Chapters on Child Stammering.  This is not hearsay or guess-work but facts gleaned from a lifetime of experience.