The Shy Kid Who Did Not Speak

I was the shy kid who did not make friends and did not speak in class growing up. I have always had a poor sense of self-confidence due to having a speech impediment as a child. I could not speak until I was almost three. My parents and the doctors thought I might be deaf, and I almost went to a preschool for deaf children. Once I could speak, I spent the next nine years in speech therapy, until I was twelve. That is most of a childhood spent learning to do something the other kids never had to think about.

What staying quiet cost me

A kid learns quickly what is safe. For me, safe was quiet. If I did not raise my hand, nobody heard me get a word wrong. If I did not start the conversation at recess, nobody asked me to repeat myself. So I stopped trying, and everyone, including me, decided I was shy.

I do not think I was shy. I think I was doing math. Every sentence had a cost, and most of the time I decided it was not worth paying.

When we moved to New Jersey, the other moms thought my parents had only one son. I would not go out, so they had no idea I existed.

School made it harder. I had to take a year of a foreign language, so the kid who was still fighting with English now had to speak French out loud in a classroom. I can still read and write French OK. I never spoke it well. It did not help that I had a crush on a girl in that class who was a year older than me.

In high school, it showed up on my report card. I couldn’t speak in front of people, and in some classes that put a ceiling on my grade.

The trouble with that math is that it compounds. Friends are made by talking, and teachers get to know the kids who answer. Skip enough of those moments, and you start to believe the quiet kid is who you are. I believed it long after the therapy ended.

It never fully went away

The impediment outlasted the therapy. I still have trouble pronouncing some words. I still have to slow myself down, on purpose, to speak clearly.

The best way I can describe it is that my brain thinks faster than my mouth can get the words out. The thought is finished and waiting, and my mouth is still three words back. When I rush to catch up, the words pile into each other. So I slow down, and slowing down takes an effort that the people listening never see.

I have called it a ball and chain, because that is how it has felt my entire life. It is always there. I drag it into every conversation I have.

What changed

Nothing changed all at once. In college, I really tried to come out of my shell, and I made an effort to make friends. I still had a fear of speaking in front of people, but I was getting better.

The bigger decision came seven years into my professional career. I realized that if I could not communicate well, my earnings and my professional ceiling would both be limited. So I made a decision to improve my speaking and my writing.

For speaking, that meant facing the fear. I started giving talks at local technical user groups and small tech conferences. I was not good. I was trying.

That was more than 20 years ago. I seem to do a decent job of it now, enough that I speak at tech conferences around the world, which is the exact thing I spent my childhood avoiding.

The fear never left. After all those years, I still feel anxiety and a dreadful fear before I speak, and I work through it every time. When I am up there, I have to make my brain slow down almost to a crawl so that my mouth can keep up.

What I would tell that kid

I would tell him the truth, which is that it does not go away. The impediment is still here, and so is the fear. The chain is real, and he can still walk with it.

I would also tell him not to wait for the fear to leave before he starts, because I have been at this for more than 20 years and it has not left. You do it scared, and you do it badly at first. Then you keep going and you get better. I am still getting better.

If there is a quiet kid in your life, or a coworker who never speaks up in meetings, please do not assume they have nothing to say. Some of us are still working out how to get the words out. Give us a second.

Why I am writing this

I am not writing this for pity, and I do not want anyone to feel sorry for me. I am writing it for the people who have this issue, and for the parents of a child with a speech impediment. With some help and some work, anyone can improve their communication skills and their career.

If that is you, or your kid, and you want to chat, I am here to help. Email me (cwoodruff@live.com), DM me on social media or if you see my at events please say hello and chat.