Quotes linked to the text regarding the psychosocial challenges of living with Silver-Russell syndrome (SRS)
| Having a stammer* | It’s affecting me sometimes talking in class, because I don’t really want to, in case people (…) laugh at me because I don’t really want to be trying to start saying one word and so I tend to not really speak that much. And I don’t like it when teachers pick on you, because that just makes me go ‘I just can’t do it’. (P03_F) |
| Early issues with appearance | Because children are always looking for differences, it doesn’t bother me [having SRS). When I was ten, I’d get really bothered about it. I would think ‘Oh why is it me, why did I have to have it?’ and it was like ‘I’m different, why!’ (N)ow it’s kind of gone down again. (P02_F) |
| Feeling left behind |
P01_F’s mum: Your friendship went off a little bit, because they were all going off going out to the cinema and parties. P01_F: And they didn’t invite me much. Interviewer: How did that feel? P01_F: Sometimes I felt sad about it. |
| Feel different to others with SRS | I think I felt like they felt they were different to me - they got different - I don’t know how it works, but I did feel like some people were different than other people. I’ve met some people who were just smaller than other people, but then I met other people that had other stuff and all of that. (P05_M) |
| Treated differently | It was different in different years, so in Year 7, people used to give me very odd looks and kind of dirty looks, for no other reason than I was just small. People used to treat me a lot differently. The most noticeable time that this happened was I was in a football team for about three years, one girl there refused to acknowledge that I was older than I looked. It’s surprising really. You get very different reactions when you’re a certain height. (P07_F) |
| Appearance | It was more when I was younger - it was more noticeable. So, my eyes were a bit further apart when I was younger. They’ve gone more normal now. But they were more spaced apart when I was younger. (P07_F) |
*There may not be a specific link between SRS and stammer, but 40% of children with SRS have delayed speech.30