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From: Walt Manning
Date: 20 Oct 2008
Time: 12:02:28 -0500
Remote Name: 141.225.97.59
Hello Sarah, Thank you for your previous comments on your earlier note. Making stuttering an acceptable topic of conversation is an important goal of treatment for children and adolescents and it sounds like this is especially true in this case. Regardless of what else occurs in treatment establishing an open channel of communication about this problem indicates a significant success. I don't know if it's your responsibility to communicate this to his father. Without being there and having a feel for your client and his father and the family in general,it's difficult to know for sure how to proceed. A history of stuttering in the family may influence the possibilities. It may be useful to have the father view some selected sections of a therapy session that you have with his son. Your modeling of how it is possible to be curious and interested about stuttering can be enlightening for people who are used to thinking about stuttering as shameful and as something not to be discussed. If the father and son share an interest in sports it might be worth a try to discuss the all the successful athletes (as well as many others) who have stuttered. It might be worthwhile to have your client write a letter to his father about his experiences with stuttering WITHOUT any plans to actually give this to his father. This should help your client to organize his thoughts and you might, based on these thoughts, role-play a discussion with you (or your clinical supervisor) taking the role of the father. If the client eventually felt comfortable about showing the letter – or portions of it – to his father, he could ask his father if he would like to read it. The father may think that, in some way or other, it is his responsibility to somehow ‘fix’ his son’s problem. The son may provide a service to his father by informing him that stuttering is no one’s fault and that his stuttering something he will be able to cope with and very likely – with good help - be able to achieve much improved fluency. Of course, having the family attend an NSA or Friends conference would provide many opportunities to discuss the many interesting aspects of stuttering. Perhaps having the family, including the father, read through one of the publications from these groups would also get things moving in the direction of communication about stuttering in general and about the son, in particular. Experiment with these ideas and see what happens.