As someone who takes kids to speech therapists, it is not the same. Casual conversation is critical to help correct speech impediments, that practice with a therapist alone would not give.
He could be seeing a speech therapist in too, but one is giving him technique and exercise in how to improve and the other is helping him get practice.
I used to work in the Apple Store. It was quite common for people to come in, hand me a card that said something like “I’m practicing my speech, please be patient”. Was pretty wholesome
Not just that, but sometimes you just want to feel fucking normal. Going out and talking to someone is something that was beyond his grasp. Paying an escort for a conversation at a restaurant gives a veneer of normalcy that you can't get from a speech therapist.
I started working as a school bus driver a couple of years ago, and my first run was picking up a wheelchair-bound teenage girl with cerebral palsy and driving her to school. After a couple of weeks my boss called me into the office and told me that the girl's father had called her about me. I thought I was in trouble for some reason, but my boss told me that the father had wanted to commend me just because I talked to the girl every morning like a normal person. This actually depressed me because it meant that none of the other drivers had ever talked to her for the years she'd been going to this school. It's like the bare fucking minimum decent thing you can do for someone in a tough situation, and they couldn't be bothered.
Unfortunately, the run was in demand because it took so long to get to her school (I'd only been given it briefly because we had so many drivers out with COVID-19) and I was soon replaced by a more senior driver - who never acknowledged the girl's existence, as her father related to me when I ran into him at the local farmers market.
God bless you. Let me tell you from first hand experience cerebal palsy sucks balls. Every muscle is tight and waking up in the morning feels like waking from a 1000 year slumber.
But to be honest the worse part of having this disease isn't usually the disease. Its the way people treat you, they usually talk down, as if you aren't capable of complex thought or actions.
Just because you walk stiff or can't walk,
Its honestly nice when you find people that see you as an actual person. Honestly that's really awesome, you made that much of an impact.
Not everyone is comfortable doing everything a client asks of them. And social awkwardness can be as much of a deal breaker as anything weird you want in bed.
Honestly, a lot of that is risk assessment. A fair share of their customers are mentally unwell, and a lot of those are prone to parasocial relations. They can even snap and kidnap, murder, stalk or harass their companions, or at least that is what my cousin who is an escort told me when I asked her about why she was denying a request for a dinner at a fancy restaurant.
Also, a fair share of customers who hire them to a companionship gig to an expensive place, end up getting abusive if they "fail" to "woo" their companion, who didn't even attend with the state of mind to accept a wooing, went there as a businesses transaction.
Very much not just an American thing. Being an adult and admitting that you need professional help for something most people master as children isn't that easy for everyone
Here it's not about admitting it though but to actively seek help. They obviously admitted it and looked for help by an escort instead of a professional practitioner.
There are people like this all around us, an invisible sea through which we swim unknowingly. Sorrow is the human condition, but we don't see it because most people don't communicate it.
This is what I don't get about biden critics. He overcame his own stutter, for the most part. I can't imagine how the stutter manifests itself when you're 83.