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From: Peter Reitzes
Date: 10 Oct 2008
Time: 17:42:16 -0500
Remote Name: 68.107.236.82
Rick, I think it is a great mistake for the client and the SLP to focus on what you called “100% fluency” and on what I call the absence of stuttering. Sure SLPs and clients need to accept responsibility, but not for “fluency.” My job is to work with my clients to identify what their stuttering problem or challenges are and to work with them to figure out strategies and ideas to change how they react to stuttering and related issues. I do see motivation as being the key issue, but having an SLP who “gets it,” who listens and who pushes and backs off at the right time doesn’t hurt. You write that “sometimes” the client “needs to accept his/her stuttering.” I would say that accepting stuttering all of the time is more appropriate. In my view, stuttering is always okay. In my opinion, one can accept stuttering while also accepting that he or she wants to make changes. On a related topic, I recently heard a poker podcast where the hosts were talking about taking risks, trying new strategies and getting over this idea that losing a hand is the worst thing in the world. The hosts were saying that a good exercise for online poker players is to play in a low stakes game (so you can’t lose much money) and to cover up the part of their computer screen that shows their hole cards (this way, you can bet, but you can’t see your own cards). Players were encouraged to bet and fold depending on how they thought their opponents would act (If the player felt a big bet would cause everyone to fold, they were encouraged to try it). The idea is that many poker players play their cards instead of playing their opponents and using all available information. The idea was to face a situation by trying something completely different. When I first started speech therapy, I went in knowing that any stuttering was failure. But my therapist knew something I didn’t – that I could see stuttering differently and that stuttering was okay. My therapist knew that I would have to try something completely different. For me, that meant accepting stuttering.