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From: Klaas Bakker, Springfield Missouri
Date: 01 Oct 2008
Time: 16:17:30 -0500
Remote Name: 146.7.150.9
Keith, all of your questions are of a type that invite long answers. I'll try to control myself! First, I agree with you that successful early intervention is cost effective (it takes less time as there are fewer and typically less severe symptoms to work on than would be the case with older children who stutter). However, early intervention also prevents the stress, negative experiences, of significant part of one's life. That could be called "emotional cost" that can be avoided. I consider great early interventions: (1). behavior therapy following the Lidcombe approach (where parents do the actual behavior changing mostly in real life) (2). to analyze how a child and others in the family interact (to see how we can make speaking easier for the child; or to avoid situations where speaking is stressful or demanding), and (3). anything we can do to make speaking fun and not having to be concerned about it. How to affect governments towards supporting early intervention is not my specialization, but I assume organizations that specialize on stuttering or other fluency disorders could accumulate power, and lobbies, to consider investing in reducing the costs of lengthier therapies later in life, and of having have many people's life quality negatively affected by this problem for many years!