I'm pretty sure my speech was normal when I started learning to talk, then when I was about 3 or 4 I went to a nursery and there was a girl there with a stutter. I don't remember much as I was so young, but it used to really confuse me because I didn't understand what it was. All the kids there used to tell her 'you only need to say it once'. Then one day I just started stuttering. Again, I can't really remember, but I was confused, because I'd tell myself 'you only need to say it once, just like I'd told the girl, but I just couldn't. It would always come out like 't-t-there is a-a c-c-c-car.' My mum started sending my to speech therapy, but it wasn't very often - maybe once a fortnight - and I went for a few years. I wasn't very self aware because I was so young, and kids can actually be quite accommodating, so no one ever really said anything, so I'm not sure how severe it was at this time. Since then its sort of come and gone, and got gradually worse over time. I can't say for sure, but I don't know if it was that girl with the stutter who influenced mine. I spent a lot of time with her as she was one of my closest friends at the nursery. I pretty much played with her from arriving at the nursery to when my mum came to pick me up, which was probably about 5 hours, 5 days a week. And I was at the age where your still sort of perfecting the art of speaking, and they say at that age your brain is like a sponge, so everything around you is absorbed into your brain and influences you massively for the rest of your life. These influences are sort of the foundations of your brain. I don't know anything, I'm not a scientist, but I do think that little girl had at least some effect on my stutter.