At camp for kids who stutter, cheers and support

During the school year, Charlie Rosso, 10, was mocked and called names every day at his Riverhead middle school because he stutters.

"I kind of get used to it, almost, but still I don't like it," Charlie said.

No one ridiculed Charlie on Thursday at a free camp for stutterers that he and 15 other kids ages 5 to 16 are attending this week at Stony Brook University's Southampton campus.

"I am happy that I don't come home every day with all these thoughts in my head that everyone's just making fun of me," he said.

Instead, Charlie was the one cracking jokes as he stood on stage in front of about 50 kids, counselors and others at a camp talent show. Other participants tap-danced, did splits and read a poem to applause.

For decades, the traditional approach to stuttering was to sit a child in a room with a speech therapist to work on topics such as speaking more slowly and starting more smoothly when talking, said Joy Kling, the camp coordinator and a clinical professor of speech language pathology at Stony Brook.

Today, "you’re really focusing on the whole person and how they communicate," not just directly trying to improve fluency, she said.

The camp, developed by the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research at the University of Texas at Austin, focuses on increasing a child’s confidence, resiliency and self-acceptance, through activities such as skits and hearing from adults who stutter, such as former NBA player Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, who is scheduled to speak Friday.

On Tuesday participants ordered from an ice cream truck. Stutterers often have more trouble pronouncing certain letters than others, so children fearful of stuttering may order a chocolate ice cream cone even if they really want vanilla, Kling said. The camp encourages them to order what they want, even if it means they stutter, she said.

"It’s not fun to have a flavor of ice cream you don’t want or don’t like," and not ordering what you want can lead to guilt and shame, she said.

Even though the camp does not directly work to reduce how often a child stutters, by empowering the children "to speak how they speak" and instilling confidence, it does sometimes increase fluency, Kling said.

"The more confident they are, and the more times they put themselves out there and just keep talking with other people, they start to become better communicators," she said. "When they really feel good about it, they want to keep doing it."

Charlie said when he was younger, he never wanted to speak up in class and avoided words that gave him problems. This past school year, he asked to read in class every day, in part because a friend also was in the class, he was comfortable with his teacher and the kids who teased him were in another classroom.

"Now that I'm in this camp, I've just realized that if kids make fun of me, it's just their problem," he said.

Trey Hopkins, 8, said he has never been the target of teasing because of his stuttering. His mother, AviElle Hopkins, 39, said that may be in part because he had been with the same small group of classmates since kindergarten at Lawrence Woodmere Academy in Woodmere. But the school will not offer classes in the 2025-26 school year, and the elder Hopkins said she’s nervous about what will happen at his new school.

Hopkins said one reason she and Trey have traveled two hours every morning from Springfield Gardens, Queens, to the camp is the hope that, in case he encounters problems, it builds up his resiliency.

Trey has talked online with other kids who stutter, but the camp is the first time he has met any in person, Hopkins said. She likes how he sees kids "really advocate for themselves, and also to just feel like he’s not alone."

Stuttering is most common in young children, but most outgrow it. About 1% of adult Americans — more than 3 million people — stutter, according to The Stuttering Foundation, a nonprofit. Four times as many males stutter as females.

As Trey talked Thursday with a Newsday reporter, he stuttered in almost every sentence, but he never stopped talking.

"My goal is that even though I stutter, it doesn’t really mean I’m scared," he said.

He said he’s learned at the camp that "you could feel proud or happy or great when you stutter."

On Thursday, Trey took the stage at the talent show to sing and dance. He introduced himself by saying, "I’m 8 years old, and I’m a person who stutters."

The audience cheered loudly.