S2EP16-Rich "Trigger" Bontrager-Raising Fearless Kids: Lessons from a Stuttering Superstar

Herb: 00:00:19

Today I have the pleasure of introducing Rich Trigger Bontrager. He is an internationally acclaimed media personality, widely recognized as a master of microphone.

Trigger is an executive performance consultant, international public speaker, talk show host, producer, and media brand expert.

With a career spanning over 35 years, trigger leverages his vast experience to consult and coach aspiring individuals to shine on camera, mic and stage while building their own media empires. But today we're here to talk to Rich about some other things, like how he overcame his stutter to be in the.

The recording industry and how he can help other parents talk to their children about that, help them build up confidence and work through their issues and that.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:01:06

Whole family support that he's had and that you can give to your families as we go through all of this.

Herb: 00:01:12

And so, Rich, as we started talking, it's like we're. We had a couple things in common about early, like how many times we should have died as children and stuff like that. So.

And how encouraging your parents were because so many times people are like, oh, you can't do that. But your parents were like, hey, you can do that.

So let's go into that a little bit and how they helped you overcome the stuttering, how they, how you did that and how you ended up in a media business whilst. While. While having a stutter coming.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:01:44

All of that.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:01:45

Yeah. Well, it's great to see you guys again. Great to be back.

And I love what you guys are doing for parenting because as we all know, the household is falling apart. And it's great that you're bringing this up and talking about these important things. With my stutter, it was with me all my life.

It was only late 20s and it started to fall apart and dissipate and I got control of it. So through my 20s, I was a wreck all the time. But my mother also has a stutter.

So part of it was my mother understood the pain and the stuff I was going through. Now, the funny thing is, and we recently just did a. I did a full expose on stuttering with me as the example with other people that I interviewed.

But we also, for the first time as a family, I interviewed my family members to talk about the impact of my stutter on them and our family dynamics. And we never talked about it growing up. It wasn't a thing to talk about. It was one of the things that the.

The thing that everyone saw, that everyone knew. My mom did not make a big deal of it. My dad did not make a big deal out of it. I made a big deal about it.

The kids that Bullied me, made a big deal of it. But the first thing was my parents said that that's rich. We love him and he'll be okay.

It was interesting to relive that and go through, because to me, I thought they ignored it and threw me aside. Instead, they said, no, we're just going to treat you like a normal kid.

So to me, looking back, that was way more powerful than I ever thought it was.

Herb: 00:03:19

Yep. And you, you said that you were bullied for your stuttering. And I'm just going to throw out there, I didn't have a stutter. I was bullied.

She didn't have a stutter. She was bullied. So kids pick on kids for anything that's different. So whether it's.

It's stuttering, whether it's being on the spectrum, any little thing, because kids are horrible little monsters. Just kind of.

Just in general, because they haven't learned how to communicate and they find differences and they point them out and they try and get social status because they haven't learned how to properly exist in the world yet. So this is something that we really. That's really important to come to parents.

It's like, you know, even if your kid is perfect, their kids are gonna find somebody, find some way to pick on them because they're not perfect. And.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:04:13

And now they're cyber bowling. And with as much as we're all online now, that's a whole new world that we have to say, how do we help our kids?

Because they're plugging in, they're putting on their headphones, and then they're crying in their bedroom alone because someone bullied them while they were trying to have fun online with their friends. It's not just a school, the playground, the backyard anymore. It's right here online. And parents aren't trained in that.

We don't know how to handle the online world.

And so this is a new area for family dynamics that will help their children to become better equipped to manage and really manage the curveballs that come their way.

Herb: 00:04:53

Yeah. Now, this is going to sound kind of funny. Funny. But the stutter was such an obvious thing to be bullied or teased about.

And some people don't have such an obvious thing, but they're gonna find something. So how. How do parents. How. How did your parents deal? Help support you with other kids and the bullying and the differences.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:05:19

So the big thing was we were a biological family living in the same city most of our lives. So I had an older brother, younger brother, my mom and dad, biological Family growing up a neighborhood.

Our backyard was a place that everyone played. We had the biggest backyard for playing football and everyone gathered there so our neighbors in the backyard would come over play football.

My cousins lived in town, so we had two, two guys, one gal. And our family would mingle together and our grandmother lived in town who was a major influence.

And that whole dynamic made us stronger and stronger as a family unit. I could talk to multiple people they could love on me and it wasn't one person doing it, it was the whole unit doing it.

Herb: 00:06:06

Yeah.

So that, oh, that brought up something that you talked about earlier, about how our family units are so important in the United States right now and families been under attack. It's like two parents having to go to work, kids leaving the house early, one of our sons doesn't talk to us anymore.

And we found out in that there's actually whole support groups and a movement to get parents away from their kids. Teaching, telling kids, it's like your parents are horrible and disrespectful and you need to be out on your own sooner.

So you had the, the, the, the God blessed fortune of having a strong family unit that actually worked together and played together. So I can see how much that helped, that helped you through all of that. So just even saying that is like.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:06:52

Well, and again doing these recent interviews, my family members didn't talk about my stutter. Now I had bad eyes, I had bad hearing, I had other medical issues growing up.

So they were always talking about the medical issues, but not about my stutter. It was really weird to go back and say they were always concerned about the medical stuff, but if the kid can't talk, we're okay with that.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:07:15

And actually that was part of the very first part of the story that you said that looking back, you were kind of grateful that they didn't talk about it that much. But at first you were kind of feeling like, oh wait, they just kind of set me aside or they didn't care about that part.

Talk about that dynamic a little bit more and maybe how parents can show that they care about it, but yet still kind of not over care about it.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:07:39

Well, there's a couple things I've learned over the years and one of them is that a lot of stutters are creatives, but we can't get it out of our mouth. It's trapped in our head. So I would do cartoon voices at the dinner table and drive my brothers crazy because I was doing cartoon.

Looking back on it, I was learning how to be creative and I could speak doing the voice of Batman, but I couldn't speak doing the voice of Rich.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:08:04

Interesting.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:08:05

And so I played it out as an experiment of my personality. The creativity was trapped inside. I'd go to school and they thought I was looking out the window. I'm listening to the teacher.

I'm visualizing everything they're saying in word pictures, not the lady hitting the chalkboard. And there's huge disconnect. And a lot of studies go through. I mean, a lot of actors that have gone through this very same thing.

I mean, Samuel Jackson didn't talk for almost a full year because of this. He has a severe stutter. He shut down and. And he did what I did. Dreamer, looker. He is a creative. So when you.

When the family allows you to become more creative, which my family finally did, they accepted me with my comic books and my role playing. It helped me come out more and more. But for some families, that's not easy to accept the creative nature of their young kids.

Herb: 00:09:03

Yeah, I used to get in trouble for being in school and looking out the window and. And I would always have a book and be reading a book.

And it's like the teachers would try and get me in trouble, but whenever they asked me a question, I would like fully answer it. And it's like. Because I'd be not paying attention. So, oh, he's not paying attention. Ask me a question.

And then I would turn around and not only answer it, but fully answer it and expound on it and talk about stuff that they hadn't even brought in yet. So I scared the heck out of my teacher. So after a while, they just let me alone reading in the back of the class because they knew I knew it well.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:09:37

And that's kind of what happened because when I set up the read C Dick, run. C Dick, Jane, run. The little classic little kid books. I couldn't even say three words, in a sense, right?

So as I would begin to read out loud, the kids were whispering, bowling, and I would run out of the classroom crying. I'd go home and tell mom and dad, I can't read. We found out I can read perfectly. We found I was highly intelligent.

I was trapped, not able to get it from here to here to let people know I'm highly intelligent. So they labeled me as special needs. They took me to special needs. And my parents said, he's not special needs.

But they took me to special needs because the school said so. So my parents were in conflict with it and I passed all the tests with special needs. So the school was like, he looks dumb, he sounds dumb.

Which is what they said back then. My parents said he's not. And the comfort and the safety of being in that environment helped a lot because they tried to label me.

My parents would not allow it. Again, parents protect your children. Yes.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:10:44

That is so important. And that's one of our big messages. You know, the empowered parent that makes the right choices for their child and their child's education. Right.

Part of vibrant family education is making sure that you're finding that great fit. Right. It could be public school, it could be charter school, private school, it could be homeschool. Whatever your child needs and your family can do.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:11:09

Yeah, well, at age 10, with the stutter and everything else, I was in a fire accident. I caught on fire. I had to be six weeks in the hospital, almost a full year at home with gauze bandages and that's a whole. My mother cared for me.

She was my care nurse. But what was interesting was when I was in the hospital, part of it, I was dead last. Math and science in my school, struggling to communicate.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:11:37

Right.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:11:37

Teacher came to the hospital, did one on one tutoring. I came out ahead of the class number one in math and science because what they found was again, the visual side in a massive class.

I don't have time to do this, but I got one on one tutoring. They found out my visuals were helping me figure out math and science.

If I had little blocks or colors or thing to manipulate and I could do math and science better. So it is smaller, more customized. You don't want a fire accident to help you do that.

But there's got to be a way we can get this back out there again that you have to look at the individual student, not the 35 kids in the room.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:12:19

Right?

Herb: 00:12:19

Yeah. That's one of the reasons that we, that our focus is actually to help parents take their kids out of school.

And, and I'm going to, you know, back to the societal issues because a lot of times right now schools don't don't hold family values. They hold society values, they teach fad society stuff. And the family values fall by the wayside.

And if people have family values, then they're like made out to be bad or in conflict and so, and so and children start to fall behind. And one of the things we found is once they start homeschooling, it's like they're not behind, they just miss something.

And they, they could take six months off, they could take a year off, but then once they start Learning. And they figure out how to learn because the parents are paying more attention to that.

Then they, they just blow past public education and just rock it into the stratosphere with learning instead of education.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:13:19

Well, and in my family, my older brother was true genius. He was the top 3% in education and he got all sorts of awards.

Me in the middle is stuttering, bumbling Rich that's trying to put in special education. My younger brother, also a brainiac, but he had a little bit of adhd and he didn't know what to do with his attention. He didn't know where to do so.

He suffered from the side of us. They think he's an annoyance in the class. Classroom. Rich doesn't belong in the classroom. And my brother Dan is blowing it off the charts.

Three different kids, one family. Our parents treated us individually. The schools did not.

Herb: 00:14:00

Yeah, yeah, schools. Schools treat hundreds of kids like they're one kid. There is no individuality. They're actually, they, they can't afford that.

So it's like, it's really the Prussian, Prussian, Russian, Prussian military model is what our schools are based off of in the United States. And that was to actually get rid of individuality and create soldiers.

And wow, it's really weird back then when it's like we had this amazing country, this amazing experience going on, and everybody was looking for outside stuff of the United States to bring in. But it's like what we had here and what we were doing was amazing.

So this is one of the things that we're trying to bring back is, is we learn amazing.

The, the, the, the family, the way the Americans are taught to be vibrant and moving forward, it's like that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. So why are we using other places in the world's technology and ways to do things?

We need to use our creativity here, and that's bringing the family home where those dynamics can be brought out well.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:15:06

And you talked about the home school inside. I was suffering in mainstream school. We were going to have a fourth grade teacher that I was going to have which had a horrible reputation.

My parents said, train wreck for Rich. My parents said Rich and Ed, my younger brother, they were going to go to a private Christian school.

So they pulled us out because they knew the attention that was going to get was not going to be good in the school. At the same time, I was working with my grandmother who used to travel the world, taught English as a second language.

She was the most influential person, helped me become a reader, express myself and actually talk out loud. I loved comic books and Hardy Boy books. Now, I couldn't read them out loud, but I loved them.

My grandma would have me come over, mow the lawn, and then at the end of it, bought a comic book, and I would sit at her kitchen table, and she would have me read the comic book out loud. Just she and I alone in the voices of Scooby Doo, Batman, Robin, Superman. And I got to be these characters.

And the more I did that, the more I was fluent reading. So she was really the one that unlocked the real creativity of he has to have the freedom to do it again.

If I was in mainstream school, never would have happened. If I didn't have a grandmother sitting, spending her Saturdays with me around a kitchen table, never would have happened.

That's why the family has got to be engaged with their kids. I can't say, come home, Johnny, and do your homework, because Johnny is never going to do his homework.

You need to be engaged with your children more than ever.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:16:43

Yeah.

Herb: 00:16:44

Yeah. The single biggest factor in a. In. In a child's success in education is the involvement of their parents. The. The greater their involvement.

And it's not like, do this, do this, do this. It's like, hey, what are you doing? How are you doing it? How are you feeling? And just getting involved.

Getting involved with the school board being there, that makes the children more successful in any of their academic endeavors.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:17:08

Well, and that was an area that my father suffered. He was a legal guy, a judge and a lawyer, and the newspaper was his emotional barrier. He didn't know how to do emotion when I was a kid.

So he put the barrier up by having the rest of the biological family. I could go to the grandma, I could hang out with my cousins. I can hang with my aunt that was a nurse. Very nurturing.

You need the other people, not just mom and dad, brother and sister. The biological family has now traveled around the world. We're separated. We're doing Christmases on Zoom.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:17:43

Right.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:17:44

We're suffering because we're not sharing life together. And we were so blessed to have all them around together. We were interchangeable. There were times that we would go shopping.

My mom would take me, my cousins. She had six kids. And the people look like that poor woman. She's got six kids because we were all blonde hair and blue eyes.

But that was the way we grew up. It was interchangeable, all the families. I would love to go back and relive those days.

Today, if we had that today, I think our world would be a better place.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:18:19

And that's one of the things that people say is like, well, we don't have that family anymore. We are spread out all over the place, right?

And so that's one of the things that we have to work on as well as try to connect with through different ways. So like you're able to do it through media, you're able to talk to different people. What I want to remind families is guess what?

Use this media, Use these digital spaces to your advantage. Use these zoom calls, use this FaceTime, use these different things.

So even if you can't go visit grandma down street, spend those Saturday afternoons on FaceTime, on Zoom, still connecting and still reading and still doing these things. There's so many ways we can bring our families a little bit closer together, even though we are all spread out.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:19:04

Well, and part of my upbringing was I dreamed of being a sportscaster. You know, I studied, I listened to Harry Carrey and Cubs baseball. I wanted to do play by play sports.

So I would sit watching basketball, baseball with my dad and my brothers and I would interrupt and do my own play by play. And it annoyed everybody. It was like, what the heck are you doing?

But I'm doing this because I don't know any better and because I really believe I can do this. And at home in front of my tv, I was safe. I was do it. To this day, I still do that.

People are watching a football game, I'll start chiming in and making my own commentary. If you have a young child, if you have someone that has its creative juice, it's got it got.

You may not understand, but please do not put the lid on and put them back in. Do not do that. Thank God that my parents allowed me to be a little bit crazy and do this stuff. They didn't understand it back then.

Now as I got older, they went, oh, he's been doing that forever, of course he's gonna do it. They switched into now we believe in him. Before I was annoyance. Now it's like he learned how the man just stutter.

He knows how to really present himself well. He's confident he can do that. If I did not have that family, none of that would have happened in my late 20s.

Herb: 00:20:27

So I would like to add to that a little bit too is don't put that lid on your parents either because you said your dad was had the emotional security of the newspaper. So when he had grandkids, did those, did those grandkids take that newspaper out of his house? Was he more emotionally there for your grand grandkids?

Because he. He wasn't able to be there for you. But as he grew older and wiser, then that came down.

And so he's there for your grandkids in a way that he wasn't there for you and the great grandkids.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:20:57

Absolutely. My first daughter was born. My dad would come up and go and do a little popping sound, and he would hold her, make these poppy fun, make. Make face.

I'm like, where were you 30 years ago, dad? But there is. That comes alive when he begins to understand himself more, too.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:21:14

Yes.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:21:15

And he admits, I missed out on some of your stuff. But now he gets a second generation. And so there is always hope in this conversation. There is always hope to reboot it.

Herb: 00:21:28

Yeah.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:21:28

Don't get up.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:21:29

So thank you.

Herb: 00:21:30

So again, don't. Don't throw your parents away when you have kids. It's like, oh, he was terrible with me. It's like, you don't understand.

It's like he was learning with you. They were learning with you. They were growing up, too. They're still growing up.

And now that they have more wisdom and can have more regrets about what they missed, they can give that to your children and they can be there more for them. So. So, again, not just about your kids. It's about your parents, because your parents can learn, too.

And so hold on to your whole family, because it's so amazing.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:22:01

Well, our other thing was the kitchen table. We did have dinner, and we all knew what chairs we sat in. We knew how to behave.

And even though my dad told stories about legal briefs as a judge and you would talk about the cases, we were all there. And the TV was not in the table. The TV was gone in the TV room, and we were at the dinner table.

Today, if I'm at the dinner table, the cell phone's off in another room. Silence. That's the big disturber of families now.

Every kid's at the dinner table playing a game, texting, doing moms, doing the same thing with the gadgets and gizmos away. I can remember during the elections one year, we broke the rule. It was a big election.

They pulled a small TV in a little cart and headed off the corner because dad had to watch the election polls.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:22:53

Yeah.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:22:54

And I can remember the reality, like, what are we doing? We've never done this before. Go back, set the boundaries, because your kids need boundaries.

They may tell you they don't want them, but they need them.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:23:08

I love that. Love that, love that. Thank you.

Herb: 00:23:11

Yes.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:23:11

Because part of our vibrant family education is this Family development, the holistic education. And that comes from sitting down and talking and sharing experiences. We have parents come to us and say, oh, I can't communicate with my teenagers.

Like, when did you sit down and have dinner together? When did you actually put your cell phones and devices away?

People think we're old fashioned because there were no TVs or gadgets in our children's bedroom. It was in the living room. We were in the living room when we did the digital. You know, we tell our story that, you know, we got.

We got pretty hip to the drive, right? We were playing online games, right? But guess what? All of us were in the living room playing together, talking as we were playing this online game.

So we were with our kids, doing the things that they liked. But again, same room, same area, talking.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:24:07

That's what we did with our daughters when they were young. Wii bowling was very big. The Wii games were all big. So we did Wii bowling parties with them and their friends.

We got to know their friends because we were the cool parents. And they came over to hang out and do fake bullying. That atmosphere is so big.

And if you invite your friends in and you become the cool parents, you're impacting other families. Because I heard it, the bond triggers are different. Why are your parents hanging out with you? Why are you taking.

Why are your parents going to the mall shopping with you? It wasn't when we're trying to watch over them. We were just naturally ingrained in life.

And the other kids would, come on, go, hey, if you go to the mall this weekend, can I go with you guys?

Herb: 00:24:51

One of the biggest compliments I was ever paid was one of my friends, one of my son's friends came up to me after he graduated and talked to me about the way I interacted with him. And sometimes, sometimes even the way I teased him and bugged him. And he's like, I learned more from you.

And I started listening to how I was and I changed how I was because of the way you would interact with me. So. So he's like, you taught me so much. And it was like, wow. My heart melted because we were also kind of the cool parents and we had boys.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:25:25

So there were times.

Herb: 00:25:26

There were times I would come home and there would be like eight to 10 teenage boys in my house. I'd like walk in, look, go back, go to McDonald's when they had the like dollar double cheeseburgers and the dollar McChickens.

And I would buy like 40 to 20 hamburgers and 20 McChickens and I would, like, come in with the bags and, like, throw them into the living room and then walk to the kitchen as rappers came flying in after me. And so. So, yeah, that. That whole. The interaction with their friends and being able to influence generations was. Was so amazing.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:26:00

Well, part of the other thing was, I mean, we're talking a lot about the kids, but we had. I grew up playing in the marching band. My older brother was a marching band. My cousin and I were in gymnastics.

So on the parent side, for a second, the parents loaded up, got in our motor home. When we are on marching bands, three or four parents would hop in the motorhome and go to the marching band competition. And they all sit together.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:26:26

Yeah.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:26:27

So they rode together, ate together, cheered together. Right. Together and drove home together. The families that did that were not biological, but they were best of friends.

That was the other part of it, because if I got in trouble, it. If Ted heard about it and Ted was one of dad's friends, that's gonna let me know. First of all, son, you screwed up.

Second of all, your dad's gonna hear about it. And there was this web of parental support. And today with the so many marriages broken, everyone working double jobs, we need that web.

We need those other parents to step up, and they need to know each other well enough that they will be the second uncle, the second grandfather. They will be those other people. I could not escape it. And it was, looking back, it was the parents best way to do life.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:27:24

Yeah, exactly. And that's what we really want to help also create in our community.

So as we're working with parents, we're connecting those parents and trying to create that cooperative community.

You know, if you're a homeschool parent, find those co ops, find those groups that you mesh with, and really make that second family to help you, especially if your family isn't around. Right. I want to jump back to your talk, your stuttering just a little bit there.

You said around age 20, it kind of unraveled and it kind of like went away.

Do you know if it was just because of the confidence, just because of the practice, or did you do some special specific things that we might be able to give our parents some tips to do with their children that helped it unravel?

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:28:06

Yeah, no, great question. There were several very intentional things, and it was a migration, a rolling, a maturing.

Puberty had something to do with it, they say, because young kids who stutter often do phase out. Now my stutter is still with me. It's always there. There's no cure, there's no pill, there's no shot. It's not curable. They don't fully understand it.

But there are four characteristics that impact it. One of them is family dynamics. Mine was a high octane family. I was told by the educators I was not. So that was in conflict. That was a tension point.

There were things like that, that as I matured and got older, I began to realize, I'm okay. And I just shut up the garbage. The other one thing I had friends understood my stutter.

And I finally got to the point where people could laugh and tease me and I wouldn't cry and run out of the room. And I had a girlfriend. We're on a date, we're sitting down, and I want to ask up for a bigger date. And my tongue is so tied up, it won't do anything.

And she's sitting there like, come on, come on. I'm not gonna say anything until you ask me the question.

Now, she knows I'm gonna ask her out, but she literally is saying, I'm not gonna make it easy. You gotta do the job. And then when I finally got it out, we both laughed. And she says, I love you. I get you.

You don't have to worry about anything with me. And the whole tension of asking a girl out on a bigger date was all gone. Those things helped me immensely to realize no one's judging me.

They actually want me to win big. Big game changer. And finally, the other one was my brain and my mouth did not run at the same speed. Teachers ask me questions, and I'd be so excited.

The teacher picked me to ask questions. I can answer this. I know the answer. And the adrenaline would go up, and then I would talk, and it would be all tangled up.

Because here to here did not work. Yeah, only through my years of working through this and figuring out this. And this had to sync up. And I talk about it all the time now.

I talk with people that stutter. Broadcasters. There's a fluidity that you have to figure out.

And everyone's rate of speed and information coming out of the brain is totally different. And once I figure that out, it really unlocked a whole new world.

And it happened as I was an actor one summer, traveling for 10 weeks, blowing the rehearsals horribly. And the night of the final, final live dress rehearsal, I stepped on stage and had every line, everything.

Because I finally figured out my brain, my mouth, and the character that I was. And it forever really changed. It accelerated from there. So those are some of the things of Stutters that you need to understand. And people need to.

It's okay to be teased now. There's bad teasing, there's brutality. There's a lot of. But if I could actually be teased and laughed and be okay, it was so much more fun now.

And now if I'm on stage and I'm doing a keynote and I blow it and I stutter and I stumble, I'll actually go. And everyone laughs with me. They're all in it with me now. They know I'm okay, I'm safe. They're okay.

Because most people, when you stutter, will nod up and get nervous for you, and they're like, train wreck, train wreck. I'm letting them know, now you can relax, I can relax. And we go on. Those are many of the things I Learned during age 16 to about 25.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:31:50

And that is so, so important. Parents, I hope you rewind this part and re. Listen to that and put that down at a lower age. Don't wa till they're 16 to 25 to find this out. Right.

Help them understand it when they're younger. And again, that balance of kind of put the stuttering aside.

Don't really pay attention to it, but say enough to your child, to your kiddo that they know that you do care and you do want them to get through it. Right? So you have to balance that.

Herb: 00:32:19

So now I want to go back to something you said just a little while. Well, more towards the start is you recently did something with your family where you.

Where your brothers, and you talk to your brothers about how this affected them.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:32:34

Yes.

Herb: 00:32:34

Yes. So let's go back into that, because how did it affect them? Because, you know, at the time, you probably.

That probably wasn't even slightly your concern. But I can think back sometimes when my sister was. Was being bullied or something in school, how that affected me. How did the stuttering affect your.

Your brothers and your family? And what. What did they talk about? How did that. What did you find out there?

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:33:01

Yeah. Great, Herb, thank you. Because there's so many people that didn't understand this. I didn't understand it.

And it was really eye opening to go back to the interview with my family process. And one by one, I interviewed them. I even interviewed my parents separate so they wouldn't cloud it, and because they all have their own perspective.

For my younger brother, he. He was in his own world, okay. But he said it embarrassed him immensely. He didn't want to be the stuttering, bumbling younger brother of Rich.

And he cited one of the We. We auditioned for a city play when we lived in Minneapolis. And he remembers a table read that we did. It was horrible.

I don't remember, but he does, and he said it was absolutely horrible. And he walked out knowing, you cost me an opportunity to be in the city play. He blamed me for that failure.

Luckily, we both got put in, but that was the. What was going through him. My older brother Dan was like, I don't know what to do with you.

Because he said there were times that you literally could not complete a sentence. And he had no understanding of how smart, bright, sporty kid can't say three words in a row. He just could not comprehend it.

So he put it in the category as, you're a freak. And I always wanted to play with my older brother. I always want to be around the cool kids.

And he was always wanting to push me up because he said, I just didn't understand you. You were nothing like the rest of our family. I mean, politicians, lawyers, you're nothing like the rest of them.

My mom, because of her stutter, she did try to invoke herself. And her stuttering is still far worse than mine is today. Far, far worse. She has to fight for the word.

If she's going to say kite, she's going to say as long as it takes to say kite. She hasn't learned to go around it, learn the other tricks that I have.

But my mom sometimes would come in and she highly empathetic, and then she was tied to KO Coach me. My brothers knew that was not good. Mom coaching me on studying was not coming because now it's and me going. And it was like back and forth.

It sounds comical now, but it was a train wreck. Yeah, dad was the one that Ken kind of came in and said, hey, back off. Let him deal with it. We'll come back to it later.

But my dad was kind of the one of, I know he'll be okay because I married a woman that stutters. He doesn't understand it at all. He got okay with the person of Ellen, figured out he could be okay with his son. But they never had any therapy.

They never took me anywhere special. This was something that was just a part of life. And again, like I said earlier, making it a part of life was better than anything else.

Now when I interview my cousin, we're best friends. We do everything together. We go to school together. We're in Boy Scouts. He was my adversary. We did everything. We laughed. We did so much together.

But because he wanted to be the cool kid and I was not a lot of the times. And he admitted this on camera. I use you as a crutch to look cool.

And looking back, that's the most horrific thing I could have done as your cousin slash best friend. And he put it out there. That's horrible. Horrible.

Do not take someone's weakness or stumbling block and ever build yourself up to look better than anybody. Never, ever do it.

He totally regrets it now completely, because we had a meltdown at a marching band event in our hotel room where I finally confronted him and said, you're a bully. You're horrible. I love you, and why are you that way?

Herb: 00:38:28

Yeah.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:38:28

Wow. That took a lot of courage to stand up to him because it's somebody you loved and cared for. Right? It's like, oh, my gosh.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:38:36

Yeah. Yeah. I was a duck out of water in an environment that we. We should have been celebrating. And I felt so alone with my cousin, my best friend.

I felt so alone that I had to go to a hotel room, close the door, and just let the world disappear. And my head was spinning about, what am I gonna do when I graduate college? What am I gonna do when I do this? And the mind was racing.

And he came in, we were bunking together, and I just said, I got to tell you, I gotta let this out.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:39:05

Yeah.

Herb: 00:39:06

And if a kid has a stud. If a parent has a stuttering kid and there's multiple family members, what. What advice would you give to.

To actually pay attention to this earlier so they don't have to wait until they're adults and come back and review it in a video format? What can they do now to say, hey, this is. This is how this is affecting me? Do you recommend that? I mean, how, How, How?

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:39:35

Yeah. Actually, I'm not even sure a question.

Herb: 00:39:37

To ask there, because it's like, you know, you're different. And how does that affect me? How do we talk about that?

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:39:43

And it was only my mom and I. Her parents didn't stutter either. So it was this really unique thing. Thing. So, yes, I would encourage the family to learn to deal with it. I will.

I would encourage the family to sit down and say, how does it make you feel, Rich? Because we don't understand. You're, like, trapped inside your own body, and it really was.

Herb: 00:40:04

Yeah.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:40:05

So how does that feel to be trapped? And then also the other side of I. It would be good for more parents to share their feelings of. You look like you're stressed out. You look.

I mean, you. You. I. For me, my bowling was not a Big thing for mom and dad. They didn't take it seriously back then. It was like, big boys don't cry.

Shut up, go away.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:40:28

Right.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:40:28

That's what it was. Yeah.

Nowadays, you hit your thumb with the hammer and everything's chaotic and crazy and, oh, my gosh, we have to give you a giant band aid and an award for that. There's somewhere in between that I think we need to settle into and say, we have to admit bullying's wrong. Kids are nasty at times.

Kids don't understand. And as a parent, you need to step back and say, I need to hear your heart.

Because if not, stories have come out of all these people have been hurt, bullied, ridiculed for life. And we've seen the tragedies in malls when guns blow up and bombs blow up and people get hurt. Yeah, we don't need any of that.

There are ticking time bombs that have not been probably loved, listened, and cared for. That starts in the family first, not at a school, not in a therapist, anywhere else. It starts in the family.

And the other thing I will add into my story is I'm a man of faith. My faith is rock solid, a part of who I am. My pastor was the first one that ever let me speak publicly on stage.

He came to me and said, we're going to have you Sunday and you're going to preach. Now, he knows I stutter. This is in my teens. He knows I stutter horribly. But he believed in me.

And he was one of the first people to say, I see in you. And I was in a safe community in my church. They're not going to rip me apart. They're not going to throw me out the window.

They're a loving, caring, forgiving people because that's what we're taught by the grace of God. So he put me in a place to win. And again, I don't remember stuttering very much. My mom and dad said I didn't study very much.

They were worried it was going to be a dreamer. Everyone in my neighborhood was. They all went to church. I think that's the other part of this, is the faith, the hope, the love. Safe community.

You guys are trying to build a safe community. You're trying to build something that people have got to get into. That was my safe, other community, and it paid dividends.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:42:37

Wow, that is so amazing. And what a great way.

I hate to do this, but kind of put a bow on all of this wonderful knowledge that you've given, all this wonderful hope that you've given, and I really hope families go back and listen to this and think about what can I do to create that safe space, but not be that helicopter parent that fixes everything. Right. There's a balance there, right?

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:43:04

Yes, absolutely. Do not hover over your children. Let them live life. Be there as a safety net. Let them know you're there as a safety net.

Let them know that you're there. The sounding board. And if they have. Again, I was called special needs back then.

No matter what the spectrum is, find a way to connect with them on that level and let them know they're not the oddball out. And by the way, 80 million people around the world stutter. I have learned so much about actors. Emily Blunt stutters. There's amazing athletes.

Shaq, who's now also a sports broadcaster. Stunners. Okay, we're not alone. Parents, tell your kid that you're not alone.

And it does help to relate to other people that also go through whatever it is you're going through.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:43:53

That is awesome.

Herb: 00:43:55

So as we are wrapping up, normally, we like to say, hey, is there something that we didn't cover that you would have liked to have covered? Is there something like, oh, man, I wish. I wish I could have said this? No, don't wait, like 10 minutes to do that. Do that right now.

It's like, oh, man, I wish I could have said what?

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:44:13

You know, the best thing is I'll end with this as a stutter. I always wanted to have fun. I was the fun kid in the class, a dreamer. I just go back to the, if that's your child, pour gasoline on that.

Give them more creativity, more fun. Allow them to left that out because too many people have kept it trapped. Emily Blunt was a good example.

She wanted to act, and people told her, no, no, no. Her acting coach was the son, was the one that literally said, if you're going to be a character, be the character all the way in. Go all the way in.

You are not Emily. You are blank. And when she unlocked that ability to go, all in, the acting world opened up. Let them fly. Let them go.

That's gonna be the best thing you can do as a family member, as someone loving somebody that's got tough times.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:45:09

Excellent. Excellent. I love that. Now, what do you. How can people get a hold of you if they really do are.

If they really are in this media sphere and they want to connect a little bit with you for the media stuff, for your actual job? Because you're doing us a huge favor coming and talking about this.

How can they get a hold of you just in case they really need your other services as well.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:45:29

You can email me triggeractestagemedia.com trigger T R I G G E R rockthestagemedia.com I answer all my own email because I have fun. So it doesn't go to anybody else. I'll open it up, I'll reach out to you. I've got YouTube channels, I got things like that.

But that's the number one place if you want to really connect. Triggeractom and we can follow up from there. There.

Herb: 00:45:55

Wow. I just realized you were named after the lone Rangers horse.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:45:58

You know, only old people like us remember that.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:46:05

I love it.

Herb: 00:46:06

It has been an absolute pleasure to talk to with you today. Thank you for coming on, sharing your vulnerability, vulnerabilities.

Thank you for, you know, some of the stuff is uncomfortable to talk about and you're out here talking about it in an effort to help other people so that they can deal with it easier. That is, in my opinion, a hero. That's the hero's journey. You went out, you fought your dragon and you came back and you're sharing the stories.

So thank you for being a hero. Thank you for being out there.

Thank you for sharing your story and for being here to help other people and maybe make their lives a little easier so they might be able to get through it a little sooner than their mid-20s. So thank you for being here. It has been an absolute pleasure today.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:46:46

Thanks for allowing me to drop on in again. Great seeing you guys.

Rich Trigger Bontrager: 00:46:49

Great seeing you too.

All right, audience, we are wrapping up for today, but don't forget, we need those likes, those shares, those comments and reviews because guess what, we can't get this wonderful story out to other people unless you help us. So please hop on over there, subscribe, like, review, etc, and don't forget to visit Rich and his channels to get some more inspiration.

All right, everyone, thanks for joining us and bye for now.

Herb: 00:47:14

Bye for now.