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Re: refusing to use targets

From: Brian Humphrey
Date: 14 Oct 2008
Time: 08:43:00 -0500
Remote Name: 134.29.31.181

Comments

holzmannd wrote: My client stutters (primarily blocks) when he says his first name and occasionally on vowel sounds. The average listener generally does not notice and even I, as a student clinician, have a difficult time recognizing his stuttering moments. Our therapy targets focus on slow rate and easy onset, but my client has repeatedly expressed to me that he feels he sounds worse using his targets. This is because he thinks his speech sounds unnaturally slow. I have a difficult time helping him with his stuttering if he does not see the targets as beneficial. Any advice on how I can convince him to consistently use his targets? Holzmannd, You write that most people do not notice his dysfluency. How much does it bother him? Is your client a child, a teen, or an adult? Who decided that he should participate in therapy? If most people do not notice his dysfluencies, who is/was concerned about his dysfluencies? Is your client concerned? Your story reminds me of a young client who told me that he did not want to speak slow; he wanted to speak fast. He had been in treatment for a while, so we tried an experiment. I let him talk as fast as he wanted, and I measured his percentage of dysfluencies. Then, I enforced a slow rate, and I measured his dysfluencies. He was more fluent when he was allowed to talk as fast as he wanted to. Reduced rate probably helped him to establish fluency; however, I now remember to check periodically to see if a client may be ready to speak at a faster rate. It is easy to forget that a slow rate may be a treatment technique but not necessarily an end goal. - BH


Last changed: 10/14/08