Your story really touched me, as someone who doesn't have a stutter, but who also has a father who does. My father struggled with a severe stutter growing up. He was raised by his grandparents who made a lot of fun of his speech (He kindly described them as just being "old fashioned."). They said they had gotten my father's father to stop stammering as a child, and they were frustrated that it didn't work on him. He responded by basically avoiding speech as much as possible and became very introverted. Even when he graduated at the top of his class he nearly turned it down because he didn't want to give a speech. He went on to get his Ph.D, marry my mother, and have eleven children. His stutter was much more controlled by then, but I don't think we were ever embarrassed of him. His way of speaking was just normal to us. He's always been, and still is, the best father anyone could possibly ask for: kind, understanding, wise, a good listener. I think he was really delighted to find himself somehow at the center of an admiring social group, and his family was the most important thing in the world to him. He had grown up afraid to speak, very isolated, and the only family he had made fun of him. So to find himself in middle age with a large and happy family who all liked him was, I think, a completely unforeseen surprise. He hadn't even expected to marry, but when he did, and after he had his first few children, he was certain he wanted as many as possible. ("Why would anyone not want more of these?" is what he always said.) I think we all filled up the empty places and healed the wounds he had from his lonely childhood. He did his best, in his own quiet way to be kind, patient, and understanding to all of us and gave us so much of his time and energy, and has always been as much a best friend to us as a father. Thinking about my own father, and hearing stories like yours as well, always encourages me in my own efforts to be a good father to my young children. I often worry about my own limitations, or whether they'll be embarrassed of me, or how I'll be a good dad despite my disability (blindness), and thinking of my own upbringing always reminds be of what the really important things are. I only hope I can half as good a father to my kids as my dad has been to me. It sounds like you have a wonderful father as well, and I'm sorry you're having to go through this.