---
Title: Stutterers' Parents Warned by Dr. Adler
Description: The New York Times, 19 April 1936, p. 33. Unsigned report of Alfred Adler's address at the 27th annual Eastern Public Speaking Conference, Hotel New Yorker, New York, 18 April 1936, on stuttering, left-handedness and letting children learn.
Author: Alfred Adler
URL: https://adler.school/archivo/adler/cronicas/original/1936-04-19%20Stutterers%27%20Parents%20Warned%20by%20Dr.%20Adler
---


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# STUTTERERS' PARENTS WARNED BY DR. ADLER

## *Let Children Learn to Speak by Listening to Others, Not by Correction, He Advises.*

It is a mistake for parents to chide their children for stuttering, Dr. Alfred Adler said yesterday in an address at the twenty-seventh annual Eastern Public Speaking Conference, which closed after a two-day meeting at the Hotel New Yorker.

Unless there are organic difficulties, he said, a child can learn normal speech simply by listening to others. If, however, parents constantly correct the child for errors in speech, his voice becomes a problem to him and, since voice is a social medium, he develops peculiar inhibitions and characteristics in his dealings with other persons, Dr. Adler said.

He declared stutterers who had been continually corrected in childhood came to feel that people were hostile to them, and developed traits of vanity and selfishness or timidity and stage fright because their voices called attention to themselves. A person who stutters rarely commits a violent crime, he said.

In the same way, according to Dr. Adler, it is a mistake to try to force a child who is naturally left-handed to become right-handed

"Just don't make a problem for a child," he said. "If you harass him about cleanliness, he will be dirty; if you force him to eat certain foods, he will be finicky; if you try to show him how to swim out of water, he will sink. Just let him learn."

At a business meeting, Jane Dorsey Zimmerman of Teachers College, Columbia University, was re-elected president of the conference. Other officers elected are: J. Walter Reeves of Peddie School, vice president; Joseph F. O'Brien of Pennsylvania State College, secretary-treasurer; Jane B. Taylor of Hunter College, chairman of the hospitality committee, and Constance Welch of the School of Fine Arts, Yale University, member of the executive committee.

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*Fuente:* «Stutterers' Parents Warned by Dr. Adler. Let Children Learn to Speak by Listening to Others, Not by Correction, He Advises», *The New York Times*, 19 de abril de 1936, p. 33, sin firma. Transcripción hecha sobre la imagen del recorte del archivo TimesMachine de *The New York Times* (artículo 85311918), corrigiendo un OCR de Tesseract. Es la crónica de una conferencia («address») de Adler en la 27.ª Eastern Public Speaking Conference, celebrada en el Hotel New Yorker de Nueva York (sábado 18 de abril de 1936, último día de la reunión), con una cita textual de Adler. Falta el punto tras «right-handed» en el impreso. El inventario del archivo la señala como probable origen del suelto «Do you stutter?», reproducido en la prensa australiana (*Goulburn Evening Penny Post*, 13-7-1936; *Border Star*, 8-1-1937), no cotejado.