Stuttering with a Mask

Wearing a mask is not convenient for most people, let alone a person who stutters; whom conveys their ideas and social cues mainly through their facial expressions rather than their speech. Masks make talking harder and more stressful for stutterers. The person on the other end of a conversation with a stutterer is unable to tell when and if the person is stuttering or in a block. Sometimes when a person stutters it is silent, making it hard to carry out conversations with other people. 

    When I was ordering food with a couple of friends, while wearing my mask, the cashier had trouble understanding what I had to say, not only because of my stutter but because they were not able to tell what I was saying. The masks brings even more difficulty to those who stutter.

    This does not mean that we should not wear a mask. With this negative comes an absolute positive. Wearing a masks makes a stutterer want to use their strategies more to have more fluent speech with less pauses. Wearing a mask also helps the stutterer want to use their most helpful tool, ADVERTISING! When a stutterer advertises, this lets the other person know that they need to be more patient and more considerate with you. Advertising also relieves the stress of the stutterer, letting them know it is ok to stutter and that they do not have to hide it. 

If a stutterer can wear a mask and face the added difficulties brought with it, then you can too!