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From: Judy
Date: 06 Oct 2007
Time: 05:07:33 -0500
Remote Name: 70.22.163.191
Lindsay, The more I thought about this question, the more intriguing it became. Most of the stuttering therapy I do is with the parents and the child together. I have played many question/answer games unrelated to stuttering with parent participation. But, so far, I have only done question/answer activities about stuttering in a children's group and individual therapy. I have given cognitive/affective questinnaires to children with parents present so that the parent knew how their child was being assessed and so that the parent could help the child understand the questions being asked. Based on my experience, this is what I would say: parents are a wild card. Before doing a card game about stuttering, I would first get a sense of what the parents are like. This is because the empathic listening skills of the adult are so important to the success of this activity, in my opinion. If you are lucky enough to have sensitive parents eager to learn about their child's point of view, then you have a wonderful opportunity to contribute to a supporting parent/child relationship. These parents would benefit from articles written from the child's point of view such as "Parents: A Source of Comfort and Support" (ISAD 2002), "Listening with Your Heart" (www.friendswhostutter.org), and "In Our Voice" (www.westutter.org) and "Teens: The Best Stuttering Years of Your Life?" (1999)ISAD. Having knowledge about stuttering and about how children behave/feel in response to stuttering makes for a listener who does not look confused/frightened when a child risks sharing his very personal thoughts/feelings about his speech. The listener must be understanding. Also, parent/child dynamics has a life of its own that we at least need to respect. This is why books like "Get Out of My Life: but first could you drive me and Cheryl to the Mall?" by Anthony E. Wolf, Ph.D. (1991) and "How to Talk so Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk" by Faber and Mazlish (1999) are written. These books are written in an attempt to help interested and willing parents become sensitive to a child's point of view in the hope of improving understanding and communication. From what I have seen, not all parents are willing or able to learn about their children's perspective. I have seen many parents minimize and deny their children's statements. I witness alot of adult sarcasm directed at children (and at other adults) as an accepted form of interaction. I don't know what is going on here, but I wonder if it is a learned, cultural communication style. Whatever it is, it seems to me that I have seen children stop talking in response to listeners who were not trained or not able to actually listen to what was being said. Please let me emphasize that I am not necessarily blaming parents for anything here. People have different strengths. I have always enjoyed and wanted to learn about people and communication. Therefore, I took a career path with this in mind. I never liked math, wasn't good at it and would make an awful economist or accountant. Other people have better aptitute and training and choose to perform these jobs in society. If we pressure parents too much to be like speech therapists, do we set some of the up for feelings of failure? So, I would suggest approaching conversations about stuttering carefully with parents and children. Teaching parents the basics about stuttering is a must. But more personal, sensitive conversations need to be approached carefully.