Emily Blunt reveals the secret struggle that shaped her parenting style

Emily Blunt revealed that growing up with a stutter was actually a superpower that enabled her to teach her daughters valuable lessons about empathy and kindness.

The Devil Wears Prada star hosted the 19th Annual Gala for the American Institute for Stuttering, an organization she has worked with for years while bringing awareness to the disability and its effects.  

To learn more about Emily’s stutter, watch below…

Living with a stutter

Speaking to HELLO! at the event, Emily shared that she has had frank conversations with daughters Hazel, 11, and Violet, nine, about living with a stutter, adding that it made her a better parent.  

“I talked to my kids tonight telling them where I was, where I was going, and I’ve always been really honest about it,” she told HELLO! “I’ve always made sure that they understand that I grew up with something that I struggled with, and that it’s okay. Everybody has something and that was my thing.”

She continued: “Some of it was really hard, and I think it teaches you a lot about empathy and the importance of kindness, because when you’re on the receiving end of something that is humiliating, I think you learn that you wouldn’t want to humiliate anybody.”

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The 42-year-old added that she has taught her daughters the importance of kindness when speaking to someone different to themselves. 

“When people are embarrassed they are really unhappy, you know, and they don’t make good choices, and so I think that’s just been a big part of their upbringing is kindness,” she explained.  

“I think having a stutter taught me a lot about it, so I tried to take the stigma out of struggle in general. I think struggle is quite good, you know.”

Accent roulette 

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Emily shares Hazel and Violet with her husband of almost 15 years, The Office star John Krasinski. They live between their homes in London and New York, and enrolled the girls in a British school during the pandemic, which caused them to develop interesting accents. 

“Hazel had my accent for a long time and would say things like ‘water‘ which I was really proud of,” she told Jimmy Fallon in 2016. 

“And then the other day she goes, [in an American accent] ‘Can I have some water?’ And I went, ‘It’s water.’ And she was like, ‘No, it’s [American accent] water.‘” 

Raising awareness

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Emily grew up with a stutter, and has worked tirelessly with the American Institute For Stuttering since her rise to fame to raise awareness of the disability. 

She previously revealed to Marie Claire that her stuttering had grown worse with age, adding that she still didn’t always feel understood.  

“It wasn’t the whole part of me; it was just a part of who I was,” the star told the publication. “There were certain people who liked to define me by that. That was tough. I decided not to really spend time with those people.”

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“I’ve probably only now come to realize that everybody has something growing up. That just happened to be my thing,” she added. 

“Stutterers don’t feel understood. It’s not psychological. It’s not that you’re nervous, it’s not that you’re insecure, it’s not that you can’t read, it’s not that you don’t know what you want to say. It’s neurological, it’s genetic, it’s biological. It’s not your fault.”