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From: Lynne
Date: 09 Oct 2008
Time: 10:36:32 -0500
Remote Name: 68.143.177.2
Tom, I occasionally have parents who do not wish to be involved in their child's treatment. While it is unfortunate, it is important to honor the parents' preferences. In these cases, I make sure to tell the parents that without outside practice, progress may be more difficult to achieve. That being said, it is sometimes possible, with parent permission, to engage a sibling, a friend or a teacher in transfer activities. Modifying the goals to match what is possible to accomplish can be considered. For example, addressing negative emotion, how to handle teasing, how to talk with teachers about the child's preferences for interacting within the classroom, etc. are all goals that can be addressed without direct home practice, and can reasonably be achieved successfully by the child. These may be more important goals for the child than being more fluent, especially if there is little opportunity for transfer practice. Another way you might be able to engage parents who are not comfortable 'doing therapy' with their child is to investigate with the parents the kinds of things they can do for their child that the parent would not consider 'therapy'. If you have been working with the child to learn to pause before talking, to plan and use management techniques, perhaps the parents would be willing to look for instances where their child takes time in formulating an answer to a comment or question, and comment on this, "I like the way you take your time to think about your answer" or "It seems that you are thinking about what you want to say--that's a good idea". If the child is prone to interrupt others, and is more disfluent at these times, parents can comment positively on times when they notice the child waiting their turn, or stopping themselves when they began to interrupt; "Thanks for waiting until I finished" or "I appreciate the way you take turns". Those sorts of ways of helping their child may feel more consistent with what a parents sees as their role and may be more comfortable for them. I'm interested to hear if you have had any success in finding ways for parents to be involved, or what you think of this idea of involving parents outside of direct therapy practice. Thanks for your comments. Lynne