>The idea is that when you slow down your speech and elongate the vowels, it helps relax the muscles in your throat. It also helps with the anxiety. I agree that slowing down and elongating the vowels is effective. I hope you will contribute more in the stutter community! We can learn a lot from your keen insight. If the movement of speech muscles (like tongue, jaw, lips, laryngual or respiratory muscles) come to a halt, then we experience a speech block. In my opinion: all strategies are effective. If a parent tells her child to speak slower, then the child could perceive this listener's response as: "*My stuttering is a problem and to be avoided*." (which could create strong emotions and avoidance-behaviors). In contrast, we could improve our speech when '*speaking slower*', if we don't view stuttering as a problem and to be avoided, rather view it as ***Relaxing the speech muscles, reducing anxiety***, increasing confidence to speak in the anticipation of a stutter without holding back or it helps to instruct speech muscles to move without doing avoidance-behaviors. In other words, all strategies could work, as long as we don't perceive stuttering as a problem or to be avoided and, "feel the fear and say it anyway", "feel the tension and say it anyway" and "notice the errors and say it anyway". Instead of paralyzing speech muscles because of what-if, we should move speech muscles regardless. Especially if we perceive stuttering anticipation or other mistakes, excuses or disruptions.