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From: Dick Mallard
Date: 20 Oct 2009
Time: 20:31:32 -0500
Remote Name: 70.115.247.181
Melissa, thanks for your questions. Negotiation comes into play when people disagree. It does happen that children and their parents see things differently. If a child does not want therapy but the parents what to be involved, then I see the parents and the child must attend but not participate. The parents need to know what to do even if the child is not interested. I have had cases like this. I do not have a problem with the parents making the child attend the sessions even though the child does not participate; the child does listen and learn about issues regardless. If the parents try to engage the child I ask them to leave the child alone. If the child wants to participate on his own, fine, but not by force. If the child does not want therapy and the parents are agreeable, then I encourage them not to enroll the child for any speech therapy until the child is ready. This is also a good procedure to follow. Don't force treatment on someone who does not want it! You asked about when is it our place to step into a negotiation between the parent and child. It becomes necessary to do this when either party wants the other to do things that might not be in the child's or parent's best interest or that might be contrary to the principles I am trying to teach in therapy. For example, the child may want to parent to take some sort of responsibility for managing the child's speech. The child must take responsibility and the parents must let the child do that. There can be many examples here as you can imagine. My style of treatment does not change too much using this model. I work with families and if families want to do this, fine. If not, we can find someone else to assist them. By the way, I try to stay away from the traditional school program where an IEP is involved. Parents are usually more than willing to work "outside the system" so we can be more flexible. Even though I see all the children who stutter in a school district, not one is "enrolled" for special education (speech pathology) services. There have been no complaints about this either! You asked great questions. Best wishes.