Dr. Leonard Keene Hirschberg, the medical writer, whose
suggestions appear daily in a large list of newspapers, has this
to say about the possibility of outgrowing stammering:

"Often when the attention of careless and reckless fatalistic
relatives is attracted to a child's stammering, they labor under
the mistaken illusion that the child 'will outgrow it.' A more
harmful doctrine has never been perpetuated than the one contained
in that stock phrase. As a matter of experience, speech troubles
are not 'outgrown.' They become 'ingrown.' If not corrected at
first they go from bad to worse. So firmly rooted and ingrained
into the child's habits does stuttering become that with every
hour's growth the chance for a cure becomes farther and farther
removed."

This statement from Dr. Hirschberg is a straight-forward,
practical and common-sense view of the subject.

The belief that the child will outgrow the malady often springs
out of the tendency of the stammerer to be better and worse by
turns, a condition which is fully described and explained in the
chapter on the Intermittent Tendency. There is always present in
any case of stammering the opportunity for a cessation of the
trouble for a short period of time. The visible condition is
changeable and it is this particular aspect of the disorder that
renders it deceptive and dangerous, for many, who find themselves
talking fairly well for a short period, believe that they are on
the road to relief, whereas they are simply in a position where
their trouble is about to return upon them in greater force than