Farah Al Qaissieh and her younger brother Mansour shared more than being part of the same family when they were growing up. Both stuttered, and they often talked about the teasing and awkward moments they faced.
While her brother was outgoing, Ms Al Qaissieh began avoiding situations where she might have to speak. One memory from school stayed with her. When she was about 11, she raised her hand to read aloud in a social studies class. Her teacher interrupted her and said: “Stop. Once you know how to read, raise your hand. Sit down.”
Until then, she had not thought of her stutter as a problem. But after the incident, classmates teased her, calling her a “broken record” and saying she had forgotten her name. She started joining large groups so she could be present without having to speak much and played online games to socialise without talking.
“I was becoming someone I didn’t want to be because of how the people around me outside the house were reacting to me,” said the 36-year-old Emirati.
The siblings compared the difficulties they faced. Mansour’s stutter was more severe, but he went out with friends and pursued his education.
He had talked about starting a group for people who stutter at New York University. His sister was waiting for him to finish his studies and return home so they could continue the work together.
Mansour sadly died 11 years ago, but his sister is fulfilling their shared dream after launching a support network, called the Stutter Community, and has her sights set on establishing a dedicated centre in Abu Dhabi to help as many people as possible.
New beginnings
In 2013, at the age of 23, Ms Al Qaissieh met someone outside her family who stuttered for the first time. The two colleagues began meeting to talk about their experiences, then set up a page on Meetup.com. For the first eight or nine months, no one came.
A year later, the group’s first newspaper coverage helped draw people to its meetups. About 85 attended its first awareness event in 2015, she said. Some subsequent gatherings attracted 200 people, including parents who wanted their children to meet others who stuttered.
Mansour died in 2015, aged 23, after completing his studies at NYU. His sister's stutter worsened after his death. Ms Al Qaissieh organised an International Stuttering Awareness Day event that year, making a promise to herself to keep going.
“It took me 23 years to meet another person who stutters,” she said. “Imagine if somebody who is seven, 10 years old, or in their teens could meet people who have been through it. It helps them realise they’re not alone.”
The Stutter Community now has about 33 regular members of different nationalities and Ms Al Qaissieh hopes to bring back in-person meetups and start gatherings for children and teenagers in 2027. Her plans go beyond community events.
She wants to establish a hub in Abu Dhabi that would bring speech therapists and psychologists together to support people who stutter and their families. Ms Al Qaissieh also hopes it will work with schools, universities and employers, as people who stutter can be left out of classroom discussions, meetings and job opportunities.
“We can work with families, individuals, schools, universities, workplaces, to make everywhere as inclusive as possible,” she said.
The approach would address the fear, anxiety and frustration that can accompany stuttering, as well as speech itself. Ms Al Qaissieh has yet to secure a space or funding. Finding premises where the work could grow is the main obstacle, she said.
As well as her partners at SpeechCare Centre, she is working with researchers at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence on projects involving stuttering and speech technology.
One project is developing AI tools and automated clinical frameworks to improve stuttering diagnosis and severity assessment, as well as access to speech therapy.
Another project, Chatty Check, is a tablet-based interactive game for children aged three to five to screen them for early signs of developmental language disorders in 15 minutes.
Common condition
About 1 per cent of the world’s population stutters, according to global statistics. The US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders says 5 to 10 per cent of children stutter for some period, while about 1 per cent or less of adults do.
Many children outgrow it. Treatment can help people manage stuttering, but no drug has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration specifically for the condition.
International Stuttering Awareness Day took place on October 22 with the theme of Shades of Stuttering: What’s Yours? reflecting how differently people experience the condition.
Exclusion can start at home, warned Ms Al Qaissieh. “Some parents worry about how relatives or the wider community will react and keep their children from family gatherings, including the majlis,” she said.
“At school, students may be left out of oral exams and presentations, or teachers may mistake difficulty speaking for a lack of knowledge. At work, people who stutter can be overlooked for jobs or excluded from meetings because others assume they are less competent.”
Rutuja Deshpande, 26, said music and writing gave her ways to express herself when stuttering made some opportunities appear out of reach. Born and raised in the UAE, she has sung since primary school and was lead singer in her high school choir. She does not stutter while singing.
“I call myself a stutterer who sings,” she said. Ms Deshpande said she was passed over for opportunities in the events industry and bullied at work. She says the experience left her severely depressed and suicidal, and she sought counselling and therapy.
She now works in her father’s company and part-time with Ms Al Qaissieh on the community’s social media and blog.
Emirati Malik Al Shehhi, a 33-year-old aircraft engineer, said he used to apologise when he stuttered because he felt he was inconveniencing others. Attending an awareness event in Abu Dhabi in 2023 helped him to feel more comfortable meeting other people who stutter.
“I’m not sorry. I stutter. This is me,” he said. He now asks new colleagues to give him more time in meetings. At home, he has told his family not to finish his sentences or look away when he is speaking.
Reece Waldron, cultural strategist and researcher who recently returned to the UAE after living in London, says a listener’s response can change how comfortable a person feels speaking. Patience, eye contact and relaxed body language can make a conversation easier, he said. Rushing or showing impatience adds pressure.
“It takes two,” he said. “There is me, the person who stutters, and there is you, the listener, who is interacting with me.”
Ms Al Qaissieh wants people who stutter to be included in conversations at home, in classrooms and at work. She hopes children can participate alongside their classmates, choose the subjects they want to study and later be assessed in job interviews on their ideas and ability.
“The interviewer should judge them on what they’re saying, their intellect and their knowledge,” she said, “not on how they’re saying it.”
