For decades, fluency strategies have been the foundation of traditional stuttering therapy. Techniques like easy onset, slow rate, and light articulatory contact are still taught in graduate programs and practiced in school settings across the country.
But what if those strategies aren’t actually helping?
In this interview with Ezra Horak—stutterer, advocate, and founder of Stutterology—we explore why it’s time to rethink what support really looks like for people who stutter. Through Ezra’s powerful lived experience, we examine how fluency goals can do more harm than good—and how a shift toward acceptance, agency, and authentic communication is long overdue.
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Understanding Stuttering and Its Impact
Stuttering is more than just a disruption in speech—it’s a deeply personal and often misunderstood aspect of communication. For school-based SLPs, gaining a foundational understanding of what stuttering is (and what it isn’t) is key to supporting students in a meaningful way.
What Is Stuttering?
Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental communication difference characterized by disruptions in the flow of speech. These disruptions—known as disfluencies—can include repetitions of sounds, syllables, or words, prolongations of sounds, and involuntary blocks or pauses in speech. Stuttering can also be highly variable, changing day to day or even moment to moment depending on the situation, setting, or emotional state of the speaker.
The Layer of Secondary Behaviors
In response to these disruptions, individuals often develop secondary behaviors—physical or behavioral reactions that are meant to help push through a stutter or avoid it altogether. These might include blinking, facial tension, body movements, or even avoiding eye contact or certain words.
Over time, these coping mechanisms can become habitual and may be misinterpreted as the stuttering itself. But what’s most important is understanding why these behaviors emerge: they are often a reaction to societal pressures, negative feedback, or the internalized belief that stuttering must be hidden.
The Emotional and Social Toll
The visible signs of stuttering are only part of the story. As Ezra Horak describes in their interview, the real weight of stuttering often lies in its psychological and social impacts—especially when fluency is positioned as the gold standard.
Many students who stutter become acutely aware of how others react to their speech. They may experience anxiety, shame, or a desire to withdraw. Without a supportive environment, they may internalize the message that fluent speech is the only acceptable kind of speech.
By understanding stuttering from a holistic perspective—including both the observable behaviors and the emotional layers underneath—SLPs can better support students in becoming confident communicators, just as they are.
“It takes so much effort to control and even that leaves us grasping for straws. The other thing that’s really important to understand is that when you’re asking someone to do these things, it doesn’t feel quote unquote fluent for me to do fluency techniques. So if someone’s wanting me to be fluent… To me, there’s no other reason to want that except for a listener reaction.”
— Ezra Horak, Founder of Stutterology and Board Co-Chair of SPACE: Stuttering, People, Arts, Community, Education
Traditional Fluency Strategies: What They Are—and Why They Fall Short
In many school-based settings, stuttering therapy often begins with traditional fluency strategies. These techniques aim to reduce stuttering through structured methods that promote smoother speech. While well-intentioned, these approaches may unintentionally reinforce harmful expectations about what successful communication should look like.
Common Fluency Shaping Techniques
Fluency shaping techniques are designed to alter the way a person speaks. Some of the most commonly used strategies include:
- Easy Onset – Gently easing into speech by starting with a soft sound
- Continuous Phonation – Keeping the voice “on” to maintain fluid speech
- Light Articulatory Contact – Reducing tension by making lighter contact between speech articulators
- Diaphragmatic Breathing – Breathing from the diaphragm to support speech control
These strategies are typically practiced through drills, word lists, or scripted reading, with the goal of reducing disfluencies.
Stuttering Modification vs. Fluency Shaping
In contrast, stuttering modification strategies focus on changing the way a person stutters rather than trying to eliminate stuttering altogether. These include:
-
- Cancellations – Pausing after a stutter and repeating the word more easily
- Cancellations – Pausing after a stutter and repeating the word more easily
- Pull-outs – Gaining control during a stutter and easing out of it
- Preparatory Sets – Anticipating a stutter and using a technique to ease into the word
Stuttering modification aims to make stuttering less tense and more manageable, often paired with desensitization and counseling.
Where These Strategies Fall Short
As Ezra Horak points out, even well-meaning techniques can send an unintended message: that fluency is preferable to authenticity. For many students, the goal of fluent speech is not only unrealistic but emotionally damaging.
Therapy that centers on reducing stuttering—even subtly through praise or repetition of “fluent” speech—can create shame, pressure, and a sense of failure. It reinforces the idea that their natural way of speaking is not good enough.
Instead of building confidence, traditional fluency strategies can contribute to the very anxiety and avoidance behaviors they aim to reduce. As Ezra shared, “Stuttering is variable. It comes and goes, it changes. And now you’ve just assured someone, great, thank goodness you’re at 90% fluency now. And then when you start stuttering again, you’re well aware that people are going to be disappointed.”
The takeaway for SLPs? It may be time to reconsider whether fluency-focused methods are truly serving our students—or if they’re setting them up to feel like they’re always falling short.
“If you’re putting expectations like that.. They will fail you. Like they will. That’s not up for debate. And they’ll fail themselves and they’ll know it and they’re aware of it. Kids are really good at picking up on wanting to please the people around them… You’re clapping or you’re telling them good job… All of those things are examples of things a kid is going to pick up on, and they’re going to know what the expectation is.”
— Ezra Horak, Founder of Stutterology and Board Co-Chair of SPACE: Stuttering, People, Arts, Community, Education
Beyond Fluency Therapy – Rethinking Success
For many students who stutter, traditional speech goals revolve around one question: How fluent can you become? But what if that’s the wrong question?
Prioritizing Communication Over Fluency
Ezra Horak invites SLPs to rethink what success looks like in stuttering therapy. Instead of chasing “perfect” speech, Ezra encourages professionals to focus on making communication feel easier and more authentic for the student. This means moving away from goals that measure fluency and toward goals that empower students to speak freely—however that may sound.
As Ezra shared on the SLP Now podcast, the difference between fluency and communication is huge:
“One is asking you to be fluent and the other one just is asking you to talk and doesn’t care how it comes out.”
When we measure success based on fluency alone, we risk rewarding performance rather than progress. Praise like “That was smooth!” or “You didn’t stutter that time!” may seem encouraging, but it subtly tells students that stuttering is failure.
The Psychological Toll of Fluency Demands
These messages have weight—especially for young people who are still developing their identities. Ezra reflected on the long-term impact of fluency expectations in their own life:
“It really broke the way that I saw communication. And I think it still impacts me to this day, unfortunately.”
In therapy sessions where stuttering is implicitly discouraged—even through something as simple as repeating a word “correctly”—students can internalize shame. They learn that what matters most is how they say something, not what they’re saying.
“Success” Shouldn’t Be Performative
If the student feels they must perform fluency to be praised, they may begin to hide their stuttering or speak less. And when disfluencies inevitably return (because stuttering is variable), they may feel they’ve failed.
Ezra emphasized that therapy should support the whole communicator, not just their speech:
“We don’t need to target fluency to help someone who stutters.”
By shifting our mindset from “fixing speech” to “supporting communication,” we create a more inclusive, sustainable, and affirming path forward for our students.
“It just really broke the way that I saw communication. And I think it still impacts me to this day, unfortunately… it causes some pretty intense and deep running impacts to have this expectation to talk in a way that’s not how you usually talk—especially if it doesn’t really benefit you all that much and you’re aware that it’s for other people.”
— Ezra Horak, Founder of Stutterology and Board Co-Chair of SPACE: Stuttering, People, Arts, Community, Education
Empowering Approaches to Stuttering Therapy
If the goal of therapy is to help students become confident communicators, we must meet them where they are—through practices rooted in trust, collaboration, and empowerment.
Let Communication Lead the Way
Instead of fluency-centered benchmarks, therapy sessions can focus on what makes communication easier and more enjoyable for the student. That might mean exploring communication in comfortable settings, building confidence to self-advocate, or creating goals around participation and connection—not speech perfection.
Ezra underscores this idea clearly:
“We don’t need to offer fluency to help someone who stutters.”
Build Relationships, Not Just Plans
Therapy works best when it’s a partnership. Ezra emphasized how transformative it was when SLPs genuinely listened and took their experience seriously:
“Listen to your client… and really listen. Not just a surface level… It takes time. It’s about building a relationship.”
This relationship-first approach opens the door for students to express what they actually want. When asked, many may say, “I want to be fluent,” but as Ezra points out, it’s essential to dig deeper:
“What does fluency mean to you?” can unlock a conversation about identity, self-worth, and personal goals—far beyond surface-level speech metrics.
Empower Through Self-Advocacy
One of the most effective ways to support students who stutter is by teaching self-advocacy skills. These include:
- Explaining stuttering to peers or teachers
- Requesting more time to speak
- Practicing scripts for disclosing their stutter
- Reframing internalized beliefs about communication
When students have the language to talk about their stutter confidently, they’re more likely to own their voice—no matter how it sounds.
Let Go of Harmful Habits
Just as important as what to do in therapy is what to stop doing:
- Avoid asking students to repeat themselves “more fluently”
- Refrain from praising “smooth” speech over brave communication
- Don’t count stutters as a metric of progress
As Ezra shared, the best SLPs made them feel safe, heard, and respected—never pressured. That kind of environment lays the groundwork for real growth.
“I think one of the main things is listening to your client and really listening, not just like a surface level… It’s about building a relationship… that really helped give me that agency. So I think agency is another thing—allowing the child to kind of be leading some of the direction and you help guide that.”
— Ezra Horak, Founder of Stutterology and Board Co-Chair of SPACE: Stuttering, People, Arts, Community, Education
Accommodations and Societal Change
Stuttering is not a problem to be fixed—but a difference that deserves understanding, respect, and space. While individual therapy can be transformative, lasting change also requires rethinking how schools and society at large accommodate communication diversity.
Rethinking the Environment
Students who stutter often face barriers that go far beyond speech. Classroom participation rubrics, time-limited presentations, or voice-activated tech can all create unnecessary stress. In many cases, it’s not the stutter that causes the challenge—it’s the system’s inflexibility.
Simple, student-centered accommodations might include:
- Providing alternate ways to participate (e.g., written responses, partner presentations)
- Allowing extra time without time penalties
- Teaching classmates about communication differences to build empathy
- Ensuring students never feel rushed to speak
As Ezra explains, these accommodations shouldn’t be about minimizing stuttering—they’re about maximizing communication access.
“I was going to block and I knew I was going to, so I would use a fluency technique for that because I had to. Not because it was easier—but because it’s a necessity of a broken society that doesn’t currently have an accommodation… I do hope it will one day.”
We Need Societal Change—Not Just Therapy
Stuttering doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It intersects with systemic issues like ableism, performance culture, and narrow definitions of intelligence or competence. Ezra’s work through Stutterology and SPACE speaks to this broader advocacy effort—to change not just how individuals speak, but how society listens.
Speech therapists are uniquely positioned to be part of that change. By shifting therapy goals, educating school communities, and advocating for more inclusive systems, SLPs can create a ripple effect far beyond the therapy room.
Changing the Narrative
Imagine a classroom where it’s normal to stutter. A school where students are empowered to express themselves however they speak. That future is possible—and it starts with each of us letting go of outdated fluency ideals and embracing communication in all its forms.
“There are ways to accommodate disabilities in the world. We have learned that with certain things. So let’s get creative… The stutter is not the enemy. That was something I didn’t know. I always assumed… we talk about our stutter that way: ‘My stutter holds me back.’ But if we were to sit there and very like rationally approach it from a different mindset… we don’t need to offer them fluency.”
— Ezra Horak, Founder of Stutterology and Board Co-Chair of SPACE: Stuttering, People, Arts, Community, Education
Conclusion
For decades, fluency has been the assumed goal in stuttering therapy. But as Ezra Horak’s story and insights so powerfully illustrate, it’s time for a shift.
Chasing fluency often comes at a cost—creating shame, reinforcing harmful expectations, and sidelining the very voices we aim to support. By rethinking our definitions of success, SLPs can move beyond performance-based goals and instead foster environments where students feel heard, respected, and empowered to communicate as themselves.
That means building relationships, focusing on ease of communication, and embracing stuttering as a valid way of speaking. It means equipping students with tools for self-advocacy and pushing for systems that honor all forms of expression.
In Ezra’s words, “The stutter is not the enemy.” Let’s make room for that truth in every therapy room, classroom, and conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions About Fluency Strategies
What are fluency enhancing strategies for stuttering?
Fluency enhancing strategies include techniques like easy onset, light articulatory contact, and continuous phonation. While these are designed to reduce stuttering, they can unintentionally place pressure on students to speak a certain way, often at the expense of confidence or comfort.
What is the difference between fluency shaping and stuttering modification?
Fluency shaping aims to prevent stuttering through structured speech patterns. Stuttering modification, on the other hand, helps individuals manage moments of stuttering by reducing tension and developing comfort with disfluency. Ezra Horak advocates for rethinking whether either strategy should be the default, especially if the focus shifts away from genuine communication.
What is the pull-out technique in stuttering?
The pull-out technique is a stuttering modification strategy where the speaker gains control during a stutter and gradually eases out of it. While helpful for some, it’s essential to ensure that students understand they aren’t required to “fix” their speech to be heard or valued.
Should fluency be the goal of stuttering therapy?
According to Ezra—and a growing number of advocates and professionals—the answer is no. Therapy should prioritize ease of communication, self-expression, and self-advocacy over fluency. Success looks different for every student and shouldn’t be measured by how fluent they sound.
Is it okay to let children stutter?
Absolutely. Creating an environment where stuttering is accepted and not corrected helps reduce shame and supports healthy communication development. As Ezra emphasizes, “Make it okay to stutter. And actually make it okay—not just say it.”
Stuttering Resources
🔗 From SLP Now
- SLPs Guide to Stuttering: How to Evaluate and Write Goals for Stuttering Fluency
- Stuttering Assessment: Practical Tips and Tools for SLPs
🔗 From Ezra Horak & Stutterology
- Stutterology Website – Educational content and advocacy tools for people who stutter, parents, and SLPs
Stutterology on Instagram – Follow for community stories, affirming messages, and advocacy content
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Transcript
Marisha (00:01.294)
Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. We are kicking off a new series on all things stuttering and I cannot tell you how excited I am to have our speaker today, our interviewee. Ezra Horak is a stutterer and the founder of stutterology. And if you don't follow them on Instagram yet, go and...
Switch to Instagram, search Stutterology right now, or check out their website stutterology.com. There are just so many amazing resources there. They are also the board co-chair to space. So Stuttering People Arts Community Education, which is a nonprofit that creates more space for stuttering and changes how society listens. So yeah, I am so excited to have Ezra here today and
just a little bit of context. So I've been on my own personal or professional development journey when it comes to stuttering and it's been a process over the past several years. But I'm really excited to get Ezra's perspective today just to kick off this whole series. We'll be talking about best practices for assessment and treatment and counseling and all of those things. But today we get to hear from Ezra on just
kind of getting our context and our mindset and our framing correct. So without further ado, that was a long intro, but hello, Ezra.
Ezra Horak (01:37.572)
I'm really excited to be here.
Marisha (01:42.2)
Yeah, likewise. I'm just so, grateful for you being so generous with your time and willing to share a little bit about your story, which leads us to the first question. Would you mind sharing just a little bit more of your story? I shared super quick bio that does you absolutely no justice, but tell us a little about you and kind of what led you to start stutterology and yeah.
Ezra Horak (02:08.932)
Sure, yeah. So I've been stutterin' since I was about six years old or so. I was actually already in speech therapy at that time for reverse swallow and not being able to pronounce my Rs. And I began stutterin'. This is in, I'm gonna just let people know how old I am. This is in 1997. And I immediately...
my self-esteem kind of started to drop and my mom had asked me like, you like this speech therapy? And I said no. I she asked me like, do you think it's help, help, helping? I said no. And she pulled me out. And she, I don't even know how she researched this in 1997, to be honest. But she looked her, like she found stutterings, bimashalas, and we got
really, really, really lucky that in the Sandy A. Ago area there happened to be some people. so she took me there instead, which I'll always think is like just a mind boggling thing. I don't know anyone else who has a story like that, especially from the 90s. I grew up, it was just my mom, my brother and me. And then my grandparents were pretty involved.
And my mom didn't know anything about stuttering. Prior to my onset, she had never heard of stuttering before. I asked her recently, I was like, well, what did you think like Porky the Pig was doing? And she's like, I don't know, I just thought he was like being funny or something. I know it was a thing. So had zero context. Which in hindsight, I'm almost like maybe that was a good thing because she got to be a blank slate. And when we went to this
second speech, the therapist, this lady sat her down and was like, okay, you know, it's been going on for six plus months. It might continue for the rest of their life. And we need to make sure you're prepared for that, that you're prepared for the teachers, how they're going to react. You're prepared with future SLPs that you're going to have, like really sat down and said, you know, things will be chat.
Ezra Horak (04:29.284)
challenging, but the most important thing is that your kid continues to talk. That's number one. And I really think that if I hadn't had that, my whole life would have gone a totally different way. I still, as you'll see with my story, it still doesn't go in an ideal situation because there's still like society and there's the future speech therapy I would get and there's other influences, but it still made a foundation that I think I just feel so lucky to at least have had that start.
So then fast forward, eventually I have to go to a different speech therapist. I went through a private school and so it was like not through the school district. It was through, we had to like go through this whole rigmarole, get insurance improved. So I have like letters that teachers wrote about how desperately I needed speech therapy if I wanted to be successful in life going on, which my mom kept everything. And so I still have all of that, which feels odd.
But as far as my mom went, she made number one thing of like, I just want to make sure you keep talking. So I was a very, very social outgoing kid. And you could see that start to take hits as things happen. I was always volunteering and teachers wouldn't call on me in class. I wanted to be in a play in third grade. And the parents of my classmates took my lines from three lines to half a line.
Every time I stuttered they were asking me, are you sure you want to do this? And I was, I, that was my first memory of stuttering. I'd been stuttering for several years, but my first memory was being on stage and those parents asking, are you sure you want to do this? And that's the moment it became very clear to me that people didn't want me to stutter. That like, well, I didn't care. My mom didn't care. At that point, I don't know if I was seeing the same space therapist, probably not.
But other people cared. And it was a battle after that. You know, I had different speech therapists, my family had different reactions. My mom was amazing about my stutter my whole life. I asked her she ever practiced fluency techniques at home because I know that's a pretty common request. And she said one time she was asked to and she started to.
Ezra Horak (06:50.454)
then was like, what am I doing? Like, asked me, do you like doing this? And I was like, no. And so she's like, okay, well, we'll stop. Just listens to me, which I feel so unbelievably grateful. My grandma who helped raise me was a very different story. She was always telling me to slow down, to do my techniques constantly every time I talked.
And she would tell me if I couldn't talk correctly, I should wait until I could, which I think everyone can agree is a pretty harsh and rude thing, especially to a kid who's excited. But my grandma was pretty harsh, and there's a twist to that, but I wouldn't know it for another 25 years. And so anyway, so then I went to public high school and...
did speech therapy through the high school and that was, I'm sorry, that was my worst speech therapy experience. Hands down, this person was quite a bit older and I think she was about to retire. She had a lot of outdated thoughts and wasn't interested in learning more. So as a kid, I had no problem telling my speech therapist they needed to learn more about stuttering. I was, I don't know what that first speech therapist did to make, or if it was just like me and who I was, probably a combination.
But I
clearly had no interest. And then high school was probably, things were pretty hard for me emotionally. I just had like a lot of different things that I wasn't aware. I was undiagnosed ADHD. So I struggled a lot. I did well in school, but it was a struggle. And then I went to college and that's really when things hit the wall. That's really when...
Ezra Horak (09:10.466)
You know, people have asked, what was your hardest year of stuttering? And I, after thinking about it, I realized it was when I was 18, 19. And I was kind of on my own. You know, I was away from my mom and my mom had done so much advocacy on my behalf, had helped me with advocacy things. And I was away from home. I was away from my normal friend group. None of my friends cared that I stuttered, but I never really talked to them about it, unless it was an offhand comment. No one knew.
how much I was thinking about it, how consumed by it I was. They knew I did it and they didn't care, but they didn't realize how much it encompassed like everything I saw and did. I ended up picking to do my degree in accounting, even though I didn't like accounting and it gave me a headache to do because I thought, well, I stutter, I'm capable of this, I'm first generation college, so I'm like picking the safe option.
part of it and another part of it is, well, I couldn't do communication. I couldn't be a journalist because I stutter, right? A lot of it was that. I told myself it was the safe option, but I think a lot of it came down to being afraid that I wouldn't succeed if I had a stutter and I would rather have picked something that was as opposite of what I wanted to do than something that was close that I couldn't do.
because I was so worried other people weren't gonna let me do it, because those were the experiences that I had had. At the end of college, my friend was at my rival college, learned about a senior project this guy, Morgan Lott, was creating called This is Stuttering. And it was like a self documentary he made for his project and his last attempt at speech therapy to get fixed basically before he was gonna graduate college.
And when I sat there and I went to the school, I had emailed him, I went to it, and I sat there and I saw myself on screen for the first time. Like it was him, but he was so, he had so many similar like secondaries. So he would like touch his face in all the same ways I did and like bit his, and like you could tell he wanted to talk and he stopped himself. It was a very transparent documentary that was very painful, but also very, I saw myself and.
Ezra Horak (11:33.8)
I was thinking, no Morgan, like you can do it. And then I had to realize, you know, like, and I, didn't want to realize that the same could apply for me. That was, that took a long time. But, when I walked out of there, I went home and I wrote and I, I, a big, I've always liked to write. and I had a Tumblr at the time and I wrote, I think I'm going to have to.
Accept that this is the rest of my life that I'm not gonna wake up one day It's gonna be gone. So that's what I kept hoping for one day It'll be gone in my life and start that this is gonna be my life and I don't have to like it I can hate it. I But I at the time I was religious and so I saw this but I can thank God that it's here because it's it's a kind of the mindset but the idea was I can hate this but acknowledge that it's here and move
forward with that. And so that was a changing point. That was 11 years ago. It took me a year and a half before I joined one of the local chapter groups with the National Stuttering Association and I started to meet. I was so scared to go to those. I on an email list and every month I was like, I'm coming. And then every month I was like, I was sick or whatever. And the chapter leader was such a sweetheart and was like, well,
I was, hope you feel better. We'll see you next month. And he knew what I was doing, but what just was very sweet. And eventually I went and there was a regional conference in Anaheim that I went to and it was terrifying. It was so scary to meet other people stutter. but when I talked at like an open mic or I made connections, people were so excited and they saw me. They were like, you're an outgoing person. I had never had anyone say that to me. they could see.
like, past the stutter to who I was. They could see those like nervous things, but they knew what they were. They knew it wasn't my personality. And it started to change how I saw myself as I met other people. And I realized how cool some people were. And you meet lawyers, you meet all these career paths, you meet journalists, you meet public speakers, who've mastered those masters or like a grand master.
Ezra Horak (13:59.714)
All these excuses you've told yourself, you meet people who have done it, and it started really shifting and I realized, why aren't we, why are things the way that they are still? Like, why is this something everyone who said or seems to go through this whole, l-l-l-l-l
And so as I went on my own journey for the next like 10 years, I eventually realized I really wanted to create my own thing. wanted kind of a freedom to really say some of the things that I wanted to say, because some of the things I knew I wanted to say could come off to some people as controversial, even if I put a lot of thought, even if I'm really careful, I knew that it was going to rub some people the wrong way. And so
I kind of stepped away from all of the different places I was volunteering and a part of at the time so that I could just like not have any ties and just do it from me from Ezra on stutterology and that's it. And so that's what I started to do. it originally I originally I was just going to be talking for two parents. That was the point of my podcast at first was parents need resources. They need to know like my mom.
The reason she was able to set me up for success is because she was prepared. Someone gave her those resources. So I thought, okay, how can I help to do that? But most of the people I know are people who stutter and they started to listen and they were like, you got some really good stuff in here. We want more of this. And that encouragement, when I first started actually, I would have, if you had asked me,
How do you feel about fluency goals in speech therapy? So not just techniques, I separate those out when I talk about them. I'm sure we'll get into that. But like the goal is fluency. When I first started stutterology, I would have said, well, it depends the person, you know, it's probably okay sometimes if that's what they want. And I had some speech therapists actually who don't stutter who reached out and were like, I'm gonna ask you to think about this a little more. Like, you you're allowed your thoughts, you whatever you want. But like,
Ezra Horak (16:17.622)
you seem like you have these beliefs, but that contrasts with this. And if it's because you're afraid to be bold on this, like here's some thoughts. And it was extraordinarily helpful. And it did help me really rethink things. And so we'll get into that, but yeah, eventually that did change. And I've grown a lot since I even started that. And I'll give you the twist with my grandma since I hinted at it. A couple of years back, we were at, I think it was like a
Mother's Day brunch. And she goes, so you went to your thing this year at the conference. And I was like, yeah, grandma. I went to my stuttering conference and I, cause the NSA has an annual one and she goes, so you guys just accept it. And I was like, yeah, grandma. And she's like, well, I guess it doesn't hurt anyone. Yeah, grandma. And she says, you know,
When I was a kid, I had a stutter.
Ezra Horak (17:23.722)
And that moment, I felt like a reverse, like that's so Raven, where I sat there and everything she had ever said, every comment that was mean, and not that it excused it, but I saw it in a whole new light and I realized she was scared.
And my mom was very upset. My mom was there and almost stood up and left because she had been asking my grandma my whole childhood, do we have any family history? Has anyone in our family ever said or did? My grandma always very confidently said, no. No one has ever. So my mom was upset and I was in shock and my grandma was oblivious to having caused this reaction and no one said anything really. We're just like, okay. And moved on. But it was, it was a very,
eye-opening moment for me to realize that a lot of these times, some of the hardest stories I've heard from people who stutter with parents, often the parent has had a stutter or has one and they're repressing it, there's a trauma reaction, and unfortunately it's taken out on the child. And it just was such a mind-blowing though.
It didn't make any of the things that she had said feel great, but it definitely made it feel different. So that's the twist. That was quite a twist at the time.
Marisha (18:50.92)
Wow. And I think that is so in the series where one of the things we talk about is like navigating this with parents and all of that too. that is like, that is such a beautiful example of, cause the, not all parents are like your mom who like, there's some very, very different reactions, more like your grandma. And as speech therapists, when we're navigating that,
it's important to think about like, like these, like this was, you just provided one example of what might be behind that reaction. But I think a lot of it is fear, whether it's like personal experience, kind of trauma related, or just like fear for your kiddo too. So I think that's such a beautiful example. And my gosh, so many, I feel like I'm gonna have to re-listen to this like 10 times because there's so many.
Ezra Horak (19:44.804)
you
Marisha (19:48.834)
like nuggets and takeaways. my goodness. so thank you so much for sharing so authentically and just so much of your story. I think this will be really helpful for speech therapists to be able to do that perspective taking and, yeah, you did such a beautiful job with that. So, wow. Okay. so I think now I guess we can transition now to chatting about
fluency expectations because that was kind of a common thread in your story in like the difference between the speech therapists that you felt was and I'm interpreting this so you can correct me, but you had a good experience with the speech therapist and not so good experiences with a lot of speech therapists and it seemed like one of the factors was fluency expectations and I guess that could be and that was illustrated in
Ezra Horak (20:23.821)
Okay.
Ezra Horak (20:32.514)
Yeah.
Marisha (20:49.004)
the contrast between your mom and your grandma to potentially. And so I feel like you gave us a lot of different examples, but I think it'd be nice to just like take a bird's eye view and chat about why those expectations can be detrimental and how fluency treatment might be harmful for kiddos.
Ezra Horak (21:10.18)
to definitely yeah, yeah, I will say that is gotta be the biggest game changer for the differences and experiences is one is asking you to be fluent and the other one just is asking you to talk and doesn't care how it comes out. I've also told people one of the best things my mom did. I don't have a single memory of her ever praising fluency. Not single ever. It was always
I'm glad that you talked. I'm glad you shared. It was never good job at how you said it, ever, ever. I don't remember a single thing. And I think that really speaks to that idea, right? It's not even just punishing someone for stutterin'. It's just hoping and wanting. You can't stop the hope and the want, but you can monitor how it comes out and how it happens. And you can work on that for yourself. I know you guys talked to Nino already.
And I know she does a lot of work on processing, parents especially, but species therapists too, like processing some of this on their own time, not in front of the kid. And the reason it makes such a difference is we know that there's no cure for stuttering, right? Like people can argue till they're in the face about if there's things you can do to hide it, but there's not a cure.
The, of kids who stutter, you know, the commonly thrown around percent is that 20 % continue to stutter. And I always frame it that way because I think when we say 80 % grow out of it, we're focused more on that 80 % and why? I want us to focus on the 20%. That's not a small number. That's a lot of, of these kids. And when you're asking them to do something that is physically impossible.
You can't be cured. It's not going to happen. And you're hoping for that for a kid. You're putting those hopes on the kid. You're putting expectations like that. They will fail you. Like they will. Like that's not up for debate. Like it won't. And they'll fail themselves and they'll know it and they're aware of it. Kids are really good at picking up on wanting to please the people around them. So even if like with the praising for fluency, even if you're not saying the negative things about
Ezra Horak (23:33.124)
but you're clapping or you're telling them good job, or when you're doing some of the fluency techniques, you're making them repeat if they stutter during it. All of those things are examples of things a kid is going to pick up on, and they're going to know what the expectation is. And that's only going to be amplified more if they're having some negative experiences outside of the speech therapy room. So like the story, one of the stories I told was about a play that I was in in third grade.
And that was apparent to a classmate. So they were outside of like my mom's level of influence, right? And it impacted me so negatively that it would have eventually impacted the speech therapy room because now I didn't need them to tell me it wasn't okay to stutter. I went in assuming it wasn't okay and then was like, would have needed to be reassured in different ways and by proof.
not just telling me it's okay to stutter, but actually making it okay to stutter. I don't have a lot of memories of that first speech therapist, because I was young. And also, I didn't leave with any trauma, I guess. so, you know, I don't, but I, my mom said, you mostly just went in there and like, you guys talked and you had a good time and you played and, you know, she'd ask you about how you felt. She'd ask you how things were going and she'd ask questions, but it wasn't, you weren't,
sitting there with a list of words, doing these different techniques every time, which is what most of my speech therapy after that was about. And there's different reasons it's frustrating because even if you quote unquote see improvements, which I don't talk about it that way, but like if you know, that's the traditional way to talk about it. If you're seeing these improvements, stuttering is variable. It comes and goes, it changes.
and now you've just assured someone, great, thank goodness you're at 90 % fluency now. And then when you start starting again, you're well aware that people are gonna be disappointed that you didn't keep that up. It's just such an unsustainable and irrational expectation to have on something that isn't.
Ezra Horak (25:52.298)
isn't as easily understood for one, and two, it takes so much effort to control and even that leaves us grasping for straws. The other thing that's really important to understand is that when you're asking someone to do these things, it doesn't feel quote unquote fluent for me to do fluency techniques. So if someone's wanting me to be fluent,
To me, there's no other reason to want that except for a listener reaction. I know that that's not true for everyone who stutters. I know for some people, you But for me, that goal was for other people. It wasn't really for me because I was gonna struggle whether someone else heard stutterate or not. It was gonna be a struggle.
So the only reason to make that goal is if you want it to sound clean. If you don't like how I sound and you want me to sound clean, then we'll do it your way. And it just really broke the way that I saw communication. And I think it still impacts me to this day, unfortunately. It really does come down to exactly like what you said, this like expectation for something that I couldn't give. And even if now I'm okay with my stutter and I feel good,
it seeped into all these other areas. You probably know growing up as a girl or different things, you have other things telling you it's not okay to be who you are and that you're supposed to be smaller and quieter. And there's like an intersection that happens with stuttering that like really amplifies all of those things too. And so even when now I've done so much work and I feel good about my stutter, I don't always know if my voice is, I doubt that my voice is welcome.
conversations very often. And it's probably not just the stutter, but it would be lying to say that that has had no impact, even if I've worked through it. So it causes some pretty intense and deep running impacts to have this expectation to talk in a way that's not how you usually talk, especially if it doesn't really benefit you all that much and you're aware that it's for other people. Hopefully that answered your question.
Marisha (28:11.382)
Yeah, no, that was beautifully said and gosh, so many things. but yeah, and I think that having the focus on having communication feel easy and we don't need fluency techniques. Like from your experience, fluency techniques make communication feel very not easy. So
Ezra Horak (28:36.611)
Yes.
Marisha (28:38.732)
I think that's a really helpful reframe of, cause I think when I first started learning more about the, like the shift away from fluency, that was something that I struggled with a little bit of like, but how do I help them? What do I do? But I think that like focusing on, okay, what can we do to make communication feel
Ezra Horak (28:57.518)
Yeah.
Marisha (29:06.89)
easy and what can we do to empower these students? And unfortunately, there's, it's like, we need major societal change to really address it. But like, what if we lived in an alternate universe where everyone just talked how they talked, there wasn't like a right or a wrong way. And we could just talk like we wouldn't. I don't know. That would be so
Like you wouldn't have felt like you couldn't pursue journalism if that was the universe that we lived in.
Ezra Horak (29:35.79)
Yeah.
Ezra Horak (29:39.33)
Right. Right, you know, and there's probably a couple things that, you know, Duterte would like, like what I would do when I would talk about the journalism suggestion is I'd be like, well, what if I'm at a press conference? I always look the most extreme example. What about a press conference? And I can't yell the word out faster than everyone else. Like that's a reality. And so for that reason alone, I'm not pursuing this entire career. just, but one of the things I think is that like we,
got to get more creative with some of this, you know? Like there are alternatives to things. There are ways to accommodate disabilities in the world. We have learned that with certain things. And so let's get creative. You know, I think of someone like, and maybe I should be careful using a different disability as an example, but I think of someone like Stephen Hawking, who spoke often through, know, who spoke through this, I forget the word for it.
but alternative way of speaking, right? And people who stutter will say, well, we don't wanna, a lot of people sort of resist certain things and resist accommodations. And they'll say, well, at the end of the day, people aren't gonna take us seriously because we stutter. And it's like, well, people didn't take him any less seriously, right? Like maybe some people, but like, no, what he said was important and that's what counted. Like that's what we count. And so I don't think there's any reason to think it's impossible.
to find accommodations. There might be pushback, you know, we're not all, like that's an extreme example of someone who is very prominent. But to me, it sets this idea that it's possible. Like it is possible to find accommodations, even in situations where it seems like, well, that's an option where maybe you would have to do this or that. Like I think maybe not. I think it's at least worth considering.
Instead of the problem, I think that kind of touches on what you were saying, the problem, we often see the thing we, like speech therapists want to help, the parents want to help people who stutter from is the stutter itself. And the, yeah, and the stutter is not the enemy. And that was something I didn't know. I always assumed, you know, and a lot of people who stutter, we talk about our stutter that way. go, my stutter holds me back, my stutter this, my stutter this. But if we were to sit there and very like rationally,
Marisha (31:48.622)
That's not what you need,
Ezra Horak (32:05.924)
approach it from a different mindset of more of like, I'm working on a post right now of the disability models and like the medical model and the social model and all the different ones because there's a whole bunch. But when we work on shifting that and we see it as, wait, there's other things going on, we realize that by helping someone who stutters, we don't need to offer them.
fluency, you know, and you mentioned easy speech and I think I've seen an unfortunate number of people who just swap fluency with easy speech. And they're saying the same thing because they watch someone stut-ut-ut-ut-utter and it looks like a struggle. Whereas if you watched me not talk, you might not think I'm struggling because it's not apparent to you. But for me, not talking or using these fluency techniques would be a lot more of an inner struggle for me than
talking with a setter, even if maybe it doesn't look that way from an outsider's perspective.
Marisha (33:08.418)
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Okay, and then, so, gosh, there's, I'm gonna just try and process out loud a little bit in terms of maybe some takeaways for SLPs. And there's so many things. I wish I could process it a little bit better. But, so you had said, like, we know there's no.
career first stuttering and like some people will like a percentage of people will grow out of it. And that may or may not be because of the strategies. And like I think taking your experience into consideration is really helpful because
Our ultimate goal is for you to communicate. You have so much to share and your like, yeah, everyone gets to communicate in their own way and just having some acceptance around that would make the ultimate goal of you communicating easily so much easier.
Because even if we're using fluency techniques, that makes communication harder for you.
Ezra Horak (34:43.396)
For me, yeah. And I always acknowledge that when it comes to techniques, there's a difference in different people and there's a difference in where somebody is at life. So maybe at one point in time, they wanna use them and then later they don't. And it is important to at least have them be taught at some point, but depending on the situation and from an informed stance. not one of the things like what was really common.
my friends and I was that we thought we were supposed to use fluency techniques every single time that we started, right? Because the goal was to be fluent. And that's the issue is that when the goal is fluency, that's not going to happen. But when, if I'm on, if I'm stuck on a phone call that's voice activation, I would use a fluency technique for that because I have to. If I'm going to block and I know I'm going to, I'm going to pull something out that I never use. It's not easier.
in conversation, but it's a necessity of a broken society that doesn't currently have an accommodation that I do hope will one day. And I think we can fight for that. And I think there's a responsibility to fight for those types of accommodations. But I, and I've also seen people use that as an excuse to continue with everything that they're doing. And I think there's a difference between showing up on day one or two and overwhelming someone with fluency techniques versus
bringing it up at some point and offering it, seeing how they respond and explaining this isn't for every day. This is for if a situation like this happens, this is for when it is, when it does feel easier for you. And if it doesn't feel easier for you, then absolutely don't do it. Like the goal is, right, like you said, the goal is actually making it easier for the person. that, with me, it almost never means doing any of those techniques.
But everyone is different with that. So I wouldn't want to throw everything out, but I would want to throw all the fluency goals out. And I just want to re-approach the way we see all of this. I don't think they're necessary. I don't think fluency techniques are necessary for everyone.
Marisha (36:55.894)
Yeah, I love that. And so if the ultimate goal is easier communication, then we can tailor the therapy approach to what the individual needs and what actually feels easier to them. So I think that's a really nice takeaway. You explained it so much better than I tried to. It's like trying to consolidate, but yeah. So if we can make the ultimate goal easier communication, and then we can work with the student.
to figure out what that looks like. But it sounds like, especially taking, like the takeaways from your story are that just making it okay to stutter and really just focusing on that overall message. Yeah, okay, awesome.
Ezra Horak (37:43.256)
Yeah, yeah, I think it's huge and I think I wouldn't have been able to get to where I'm at, even though it took a while, faster still than a lot of people I know because I think I had a foundation that was very strong, that even when it got covered with everything else, it was still there. So, yeah.
Marisha (38:05.004)
Yeah, and the speech therapist listening can be that for, like they can provide that same foundation for other students. Okay. And then, so you kind of shared some of this already, but if we're embracing stuttering as like a natural part of communication and we're focusing on just like, okay, what can we do to make communication feel easier? What?
What are some of the things that like your foundational SLP did that were really helpful? And maybe what are some other things that others speech therapists or whether it doesn't matter who did what, but what are some things that weren't helpful in like working towards that goal? you have, can we maybe recap like a handful of things?
Ezra Horak (38:56.612)
Yeah. I think one of the main things is listening to your client and really listening, not just like a surface level, like, you know, asking questions and understanding, because we'll sometimes parrot back what we've heard. If you would have asked me my goal in high school, I would have said fluency. And then you would have written fluency in my goal. And it would have taken, well, what does fluency mean to you? Right. What what's different about your life? If you're like what's
what's really going on. And that takes time. It's about building a relationship. I think my first speech therapist did that. I think some of the other ones I had, not in high school, but a little bit later on, did work on that. And you could see that it did benefit us to have built a relationship and for them to really be listening. And sometimes they were wrong. And the...
I remember the times I called it out, they were embarrassed, sure, as a child saying something to an adult, it's gonna feel a little weird, but they listened to me and in the future changed things. And so I think that really helped give me that agency. So I think agency is another thing is allowing the child to kind of be leading some of the direction and you help guide that, right? You don't just give them, but like you...
the child led kind of thing I think is really important. And knowing that everyone's different, I was super social. I liked to raise my hand every moment I could if I even thought maybe I knew the answer. Not everyone's that way. Some kids may not want to ever raise their hand and it might have nothing to do with stuttering at all, right? Just like there's a variation with non-stuttering kids, there's a variation with stuttering kids. So just kind of trying to suss that out though, needs a relationship. So it really all comes down to like,
listening and building a relationship and having a difference in the expectations, obviously. And she helped prepare the people around and we did self agency things or self advocacy things, I mean. And so would teach me, okay, you you're talking to your teacher, you want to let them know that you set her, how are you going to let them know? And helping me build those kinds of things. Role play, is it something that like
Ezra Horak (41:16.504)
I did much, but I've heard other people really speak highly of it as far as kind of helping build that same confidence. So focusing on like the confidence of the child and if they're spontaneously speaking, because even if they're not an outgoing kid, you would hope that at home or in the therapy room, they're spontaneously speaking of their own accord at times, because that is something that you do expect to see in, maybe not all children, but like a good amount of them. And so just trying to...
navigate more. think Chris Constantino, he's a researcher. He talks about spontaneous speech as a shift in goals. And then some of the things that weren't helpful were lists. And I hate that because I know it's easier and it's like, and I know how overwhelming speech therapists are. But when it's just like, you're going down a list, you're doing the technique, and then you have to repeat things that you do, quote unquote, wrong. Because why else would you repeat it unless you
did it wrong and it was considered wrong if I stuttered when I did it, right? So even if maybe the sweet therapist didn't realize that, being very mindful when you're doing, because sometimes you do, you do your practices, you do your lists or maybe instead of a list you have them like read from a book, which sometimes I did, and practice it on words from the book instead. And just being mindful of what you're doing every time you interrupt someone who stutters.
because it's not gonna be, it's being received as, I did something wrong. Letting go of absolutely any goal that involves or any practice that involves counting how many times someone stutters. And I know that that can be an intro. I'm sure you'll cover it in future ones of how that goes. But the more you can let go of that, especially having the kid or even adult count is...
Ezra Horak (43:11.428)
How do I say, I'm not, I don't want to say like abusive, but it's going to cause trauma. Like that will definitely. And yeah, I think there's like a lot of the things that feel like, okay, well, this would be easier to do. This is measurable. You want to question that. You want to question, well, what am I actually measuring?
is this a full picture of someone? And so it's hard. I'm giving more instead of like a list of things of it's more of a like thought process with the different things, but like questioning when something feels straightforward in stuttering therapy because it's usually not, and I'm sorry, but it's you're working with human beings and we are nothing. We are not straightforward. That's not a word and not consistent across the board. Right. And so
The more nuanced something is, probably the better territory you're in.
Marisha (44:13.718)
Yeah, that's really helpful. And the subsequent episodes will dive into a lot more of the like specific things that we can do and what it looks like to implement that. because there are ways to, cause we need to have our numbers for billing or whatever. And there are some beautiful, like neurodiversity affirming child friendly, child led ways to.
meet our requirements and do what's best for students too. So stay tuned for all the future episodes because we are going to dive into all of that. yeah, Ezra, this was so helpful in just getting to kind of set the stage and thinking about some of the different perspectives and
Like thank you for doing such a nice job of sharing your story. And I feel like I got to kind of.
I don't know. feel like it just has really helped with my perspective and you just shared some really beautiful examples. is there anything else that you, I know that we could probably talk for hours and hours and hours, but are there any, is there anything else that you really wanted to share before we wrap up?
Ezra Horak (45:38.212)
Yeah, and I think the main thing is keeping in mind, you know, that people have a lot going in, that they have a history going into speech therapy. And so what might sound like something really clear, I want fluency, maybe, but maybe it's worth going further into those things. I think to me, that's the biggest thing is most people think someone who stutters wants fluency. It's a pretty common thought. It's not true all the time. But I think that that's
mostly a problem in a lot of people who stutter think that everyone who stutters wants fluency because they've never been told anything else. They've never considered anything else. So sometimes you're going to be exposing someone to something they've never even considered in their life and it goes against everything their worldview is based off of. so being aware of that and
mindful of that and knowing it might not go, you're not gonna tell someone, it's actually okay to stutter. You're be like, okay, great, it's great now. It's gonna be a process and it's gonna be probably hard depending how much that person has built it up. Maybe they have nothing, maybe they're like me at six years old and they go in and they're like, okay, it's okay to stutter, sure, great. That's awesome, I want that. I hope that's more and more common as time goes on.
But it's also possible you're gonna get the opposite of that. And also my last thing is, yeah, that kindness with parents and guardians, whoever's helping raise that kid, it's, I imagine, unbelievably hard sometimes. I remember fights between my grandma and the speech therapist. And finding ways to appease them while also protecting the kid is really hard and it's not an easy task. And I admire...
Some of those speech therapists, maybe I didn't have 100 % perfect experience, but I do remember that they found it important to, no matter what they said to her, made sure I felt safe in the speech therapy room. And that was the most important thing I think that they could have offered me at that time.
Marisha (47:50.604)
Yeah. And I love that you, what you pointed out about ask, one of the questions that you said was like, what does fluency mean to you? Because society is telling us that and telling our students you need to be fluent. Like that's kind of the societal expectation at this point. And I feel like it's starting to shift.
Ezra Horak (48:16.568)
Yeah, and I feel like people don't, yeah, sorry.
Marisha (48:19.128)
There's more acceptance in certain places than others. But asking, what does fluency mean to you? And using that to dig down a little bit more and figure out what the student, because the student is probably going to tell us they want to be fluent. I don't know if that would.
Ezra Horak (48:35.748)
Mm hmm. It, checks the box. Yeah.
Marisha (48:39.084)
Yeah, but what do they actually want and what would actually be helpful? And I feel like you gave some really nice examples on how to like dig into that and we might not be taking what students say right at face value.
Ezra Horak (48:54.094)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I think people don't even realize how different it can feel for like for me. When I said I wanted to be fluent, what I meant, I didn't want to think about the way that I talked. That's what I meant. And so offering me fluency techniques was to me, that's not fluency. That's still stuttering. I'm still dealing with the stutter. So that's not fluency. But what I didn't know then was that I could not think about the way that I talked and
Marisha (49:04.716)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Ezra Horak (49:23.054)
stuttered. I didn't know that that was an option until I was in my 20s. So you'd be surprised by what different people... so that's not the only view of what fluency means. You'll be surprised by the differences that different people have.
Marisha (49:37.25)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Well, thank you for being an example of kind of what we can just like one of those perspectives and as speech therapists, we get to have those discussions with all of our students or clients and really get to know them and what they need and just empowering them to be the communicators that they are. So.
Yeah, thank you again. This was incredible. I'm so, grateful. I hope that, and then I hope that the listeners have some great takeaways too. The show notes are linked in the description and I'll link to Ezra's Instagram and website and other resources. But yeah, I think that's a wrap.
Ezra Horak (50:26.884)
Great, good. ahead and me on st-t-t-t-t
better. So thank you for doing this.
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