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From: David Shapiro
Date: 05 Oct 2009
Time: 10:02:29 -0500
Remote Name: 71.125.100.48
You’re asking such a good question. I relate to your question as a parent, as a person who stutters, and as a speech-language pathologist. Often what we do reflects our knowledge or strategies that we have available to us. From what you have described, it looks like your son is doing what he can and what he knows in order to get through the blocks. I am wondering if you have consulted with a speech-language pathologist who is in a position to enable your son to develop fluency facilitating strategies that would be more successful and conducive to ongoing communication. For example, usually a combination of fluency shaping (which primarily addresses fluency behaviors) and stuttering modification (which addresses stuttering-related thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, in addition to behaviors) enables people who stutter to increase their speech fluency and to feel more positive about themselves, thereby gaining confidence that comes with achieving success. A related suggestion would be to attend to what your son is doing differently (thoughts, feelings, and behaviors) when he is fluent than when he is disfluent. Often fluency is characterized by evenness in rate, gentleness in onset, and natural-sounding inflection. Although disfluency and secondary behaviors tend to get more attention, it is not uncommon for people who stutter to have more fluent speech than disfluent speech (i.e. more words spoken fluently than disfluently). In any case, a speech-language pathologist could help by creating opportunities for studying and understanding what your son does when he is fluent and thereby learning how to do it even more often. I know how worrisome such behaviors can be for the parents, particularly when we feel as if an aspect of our child’s experience is outside of our control or influence. Help and understanding are available from speech-language pathologists and from self-help groups. You can see from this conference that your concern is shared by people who stutter, families, speech-language pathologists, and allied professionals, among others all over the world. I think this shows us that we’re not alone. There is no better support than that of a mother. Good luck. David Shapiro