It’s not the same as a son, but my boyfriend stutters, and I’ve had to learn to just listen and empathize rather than try to offer solutions. If he tells me about a crappy encounter with someone, I don’t have to give him advice on what he could do differently next time. I can just say, “That sucks.” I learned a lot about how to respond from watching him with his parents. There’s a lot of backstory but the people he considers his parents were his foster parents, who he was placed with when he was 13. He’s still really close to them, and they are great. One thing they did that helped him a lot was doing lots of things with him where talking wasn’t the main focus. They are very outdoorsy so they’d go hiking or fishing or on long bike rides a lot, but they’d also cook or garden or play card games. Talking can be very exhausting for him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to be alone. He’s told me that sometimes if you don’t talk, people just start to ignore you, and it can feel very lonely. So it meant a lot to him that they’d do things where he could fully be a part of it even if he didn’t talk much, or at all. Maybe also see if there are small things you can do to let your son know it’s okay that he stutters. This might drive some people crazy, but when my boyfriend is having a really long block, his mom will often hold his hand or his dad will put his hand on his shoulder. Again, your son might hate that, but to my bf it communicates that they’re there and they’re listening and it’s okay.