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Does gossip cause stuttering? My father was a Presbyterian pastor. And he loved gossiping with my step mother about the more broken people in the congregation. Then, my stepmother would pass it on to someone else that she knew. That was disturbing for me to observe. In my estimation, parents and others in positions of authority need to be wise enough to understand the systems of the people's lives who are in their care, and keep their observations in confidence. I became a stutterer when I moved to a rich school when I was a child. I remember being very annoyed at how my Mom would pass on all the things I said to her about my experiences in school. I wonder if that gossip got back around to my classroom in the form of nudges that energized my environment enough to put me on the spot every day. Today I met a stutterer and I reflected on the fact that people are just a bit *too* chummy with each other around stutterers. This chumminess seems to form a glass wall around that person. He is the object of attention but he is not spoken with fairly, in an ordinary way on a one to one earnest level by individuals around him.