Hi! I’m 26 and I’m a band and choir director at a high school with a moderate stutter. Growing up, I did all of the speech therapy (up until high school) and had help from my mom (who also used to stutter) in better managing my speech. It didn’t really work, but not because they were bad therapists or my mom didn’t know what she was talking about, but because I wasn’t ready to be helped. When I was struggling with speech in grade school, having my mom stop my talking and try to help actually just embarrassed me further and made it so that I didn’t even want to finish what I was saying anymore. It wasn’t her though. In college, my stutter got a lot worse and I had trouble saying things that I normally had no problem saying. It could have been stress from student teaching or life in general, or it could have been just time to turn the difficulty up in life. Long story short, I never improved until I was ready to improve. And then I realized that the only way I could improve was by not focusing so much on it. The way those around him can help him improve is by also not focusing on it. As soon as attention is drawn to it, the kid will become embarrassed and it’ll continue the cycle. Coincidentally enough, one of my students also has a moderate stutter and the other month. I always let her finish her words and everybody else in my class does too. I’m pretty sure if anybody even implied that they were teasing her for her stutter, I’d make them cry.