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From: Bobby
Date: 21 Oct 2009
Time: 19:34:00 -0500
Remote Name: 71.228.119.75
Caitlin: My first speech therapy began when I was 9 years old and lasted until I was about 12. I didn’t attempt therapy again until I was in high school which is when I went to the speech clinic outside of Denver. That pretty much ended my attempts at therapy until I came to NMSU. Embarrassed is just the start of how I felt, it also included frustration, shame, anger, any number of not so pleasant feelings. It also tended to reinforce my natural desires to be “left alone”. If my parents and I all had the type of therapy that I got at NMSU in 2000 back in 1966-69 when I first started speech therapy, I would probably stutter less now or at least with greater ease. I don’t think it would have fazed my grandmothers too much one way or the other as they had their minds locked into one thing and only one thing. Both grandfathers were always supportive of me at least until I began racing moto-x every weekend. My mother was supportive but at the same time scared for me and my future. She was 19 when I was born so to say the least she was very young and impressionable (my dad was 9 years older). My grandmothers were both very domineering and lived by the code that they were right and everyone else was wrong, no matter what. Do I wish my earlier attempts at speech therapy were better? Oh yeah, but what happened in the past stays in the past, it can’t be changed no matter how much you want to. The only reason I tell people about my past therapy is so they will see how much it has changed over the years and what not to try. I hope that my hindsight will help future SLP’s to change someone’s life, just like my student SLP’s changed mine.