International Stuttering Awareness Day
Next: October 22, 2027
Wait, and listen.
The story
Where it comes from
International Stuttering Awareness Day has been held on 22 October since 1998, as a joint project of the International Stuttering Association, the International Fluency Association and the European League of Stuttering Associations. It brings together people who stutter, their families and speech professionals to challenge myths, share research and support one another. Stuttering is more common than many people think: more than 80 million people worldwide stutter, about one in every hundred.
How it's celebrated
Self-help groups and national associations hold meetings and events, give interviews to newspapers and television, and take part in a yearly online conference. For everyone else, the simplest way to mark the day is to be a good listener: keep natural eye contact, wait patiently, and resist the urge to finish someone's sentences or tell them to slow down.
Did you know
- Between 5 and 10 per cent of children stutter for a while, and about three in four of them grow out of it.
- Stuttering affects about four times as many males as females.
- The day's online conference was hosted by the Stuttering Homepage until 2012 and has been run by the International Stuttering Association since 2013.
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