Educating My Family and Friends about Stuttering at My Bat Mitzvah!

Here at AIS, we love featuring our clients' experiences educating the world about stuttering! 

AIS clinician Kristel Kubart sat down with Beth Lapp to talk about what it felt like to use her Bat Mitzvah as the perfect place to raise awareness and help others who stutter in the world.

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What is a Bat Mitzvah project and why did you decide to do a stuttering presentation for your Bat Mitzvah project?”

A mitzvah is a good deed so for my Bat Mitzvah project I had to do a good deed! I decided to do a stuttering presentation to educate people about stuttering because stuttering is very misunderstood. I decided to do the presentation at my actual Bat Mitzvah because I am a person who stutters, and wanted to inform my friends and family about it. Not many of my friends knew that I stuttered, so the presentation showed my friends a little more about me and how to treat people who stutter.

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What were some of the things you included in your presentation?

I included facts about stuttering, a family tree (because stuttering runs in my family), a list of famous people who stutter like Joe Biden, Emily Blunt, and Ed Sheeran, a story about how I met Emily Blunt, and my own personal stuttering story, and a slide about how to treat people who stutter. Here are some example slides:

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How did you meet Emily Blunt?:

I met Emily Blunt at the 2023 AIS gala! I went to the AIS gala for the first time that year. My speech therapist, Kristel Kubart, helped me get near Emily and then I met her! I talked to her about how I do theater in my town, and how I asked for a part even though I stutter. She had asked me what show I was in and I said “Mary Poppins” and she said “So was I!” It was a great moment that gave me a lot of confidence.

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Beth’s Dad’s thoughts on her presentation:

“Every person who stutters endures a unique experience and must traverse along their own journey to self discovery and triumph. My personal experiences engaging with my own stutter have allowed me to empathize with Beth but the Bat Mitzvah project represents her own personal confrontation with her stutter. We are so proud of Beth’s bold courage to face this challenge on her own terms and portray her stuttering with openness, honesty, and humanity. This project is emblematic of the groundbreaking work that Kristel and AIS engage in to destigmatize stuttering across populations and we are so lucky to be recipients of their initiative.”

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All of us at AIS are so proud of Beth!

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The American Institute for Stuttering is a leading non-profit organization whose primary mission is to provide universally affordable, state-of-the-art speech therapy to people of all ages who stutter, guidance to their families, and much-needed clinical training to speech professionals wishing to gain expertise in stuttering. Offices are located in New York, NY, Atlanta, GA, and services are also available online. Our mission extends to advancing public and scholarly understanding of this often misunderstood disorder.

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