"Even close family members never understood the horror that it was for him - and for me, waiting for him to get his words out. As a child, I would sit there and get so tense waiting for those words to come out and agonize over what I could do to help get them out."

Stuttering tends to come on between the ages of 2 and 5. But in nearly 80 percent of cases, the child spontaneously heals from his or her stutter.

Sitting on the off-white couch in Sisskin's waiting room, Irina Tremblinsky wonders if she could have prevented her daughter Dina's stammer, "by dealing with it right away when we noticed that she stuttered, when she was 2 years old".

"But the pediatrician told us don't worry about it; she's too small. So we waited, and we probably waited too long," she says.

Keiko Brown wishes for a miracle that would allow her to trade places with Melanie.

"If they can switch us and I can stutter from now on, it doesn't bother me," she says.

"But her life is from now on. And she has to go through so much."

 Agence France-Presse