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From: Vivian Sisskin
Date: 16 Oct 2008
Time: 13:23:18 -0500
Remote Name: 129.2.24.10
Stacy, I work directly on elimination of the secondary behaviors prior to modification of the moment of stuttering. Secondary behaviors are often initially developed to escape the moment of disfluency, and because of that, they continue to prevent the child from getting on to the sound of the word they want to say. This is true of a tongue click, an interjection (“uh”), or a pause (what I call a postponement device). The goal is to have the child reduce the avoidance behavior, stutter directly on the intended sound/word, and then use modification strategies. I find that modification strategies are much more successful when practiced on “clean” stuttering (stuttering without secondary behavior). I start by having the child become aware of the behavior, and even name it (funny names are even better (“lip pulls”) by monitoring it (identifying when it occurs in speech). A good deal of the behavior will decrease just through monitoring. I then encourage the child to get right on the sound of the word they want to say and stutter on it. Speech strategies are much more efficient and generalize better when the child is on the sound of the word he wants to say rather than doing an unrelated behavior.