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From: Bobby
Date: 14 Oct 2009
Time: 18:39:27 -0500
Remote Name: 71.228.119.75
Giovanna: My family wasn’t all that bad, except maybe my sister. I was the first person on either side of the family to stutter, so they didn’t really know what to expect or how to deal with it. While I don’t know if I would have turned out differently if I had gotten my most recent therapy back when I was a child, I’m pretty sure I would still be somewhat “anti-social”. My mother used to tell me that once I could get around the house under my own locomotion, I would go off by myself, and I wasn’t yet talking. My loner attitude is just a part of my personality (much to my wife’s dismay) with or without the stuttering. My intention with writing the article for this online conference was to give student SLP’s an idea that people are the sum of all their previous experiences, be they good or bad. You can not change the past; you can only use it to determine how to go in the future. What some people have said was a very “negative” experience to me wasn’t. Even so during speech therapy for stuttering, stroke, accidents, etc, both the client and SLP will have to deal with the client’s viewpoint of their speech. You might not deal with it in a counseling type session, but it will come out as the speech therapy progresses. If the SLP is astute enough, they will recognize the viewpoint for what it is and will direct the speech therapy in a manner that embraces the viewpoint while showing the client how it can be improved. Most SLP’s are not trained in counseling per se, but they do have human insight that will help them to help their client. I do applaud all SLP’s as you have to have a love for people to take on the studies needed to become an SLP. I am very glad that all of you have chosen this field as it is needed, and I could not do it.