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From: Vivian Sisskin
Date: 17 Oct 2007
Time: 08:28:00 -0500
Remote Name: 68.227.196.186
Nancy, Lynne and Barbara have already provided great ideas that I also find helpful for successful treatment. I will add a note about teens. I work with adolescents who stutter and spend a lot of time listening to teens in the context of group therapy. Many of them think that their parents “don’t get it” even though their parents have been helping them practice speech targets at home, have been involved in the therapy process for years, and have read a bit about stuttering. They often say that their parents think that they don’t practice their targets enough and they would be fluent if only they did. I am lucky in that I also have the ear of the parents in their periodic support group meeting. They admit they know very little about how their child’s stuttering problem affects them on a daily basis. They are unaware of the covert strategies their teens have developed (word substitution, pretending to think, avoidance of situations and opportunities) and how complex the problem has become. Therefore, for teens, I put them in charge of educating their parents. They do this at their own rate and comfort level. Each week in group they devise an assignment which includes one thing they will teach their parents about stuttering (this can be about the nature of stuttering or about their own pattern, fears, thoughts, worries). When it comes from the teens themselves, the parents seem to “get it”, and they enjoy the connection that these discussions encourage.