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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 10 Oct 2009
Time: 16:11:59 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.15.121
Hi Patty, Nothing succeeds like success! It seems you have developed a program that is working, at least in the parents' eyes. If the child is becoming more fluent and less concerned about his stuttering both while the parents have noticed improvement, I believe you can assume you are making progress. The fact that stuttering frequency might not be changing in your probes is a bit puzzling, but it could be due to lots of things. Have you considered severity? It is possible that frequency might even increase while judged severity decreases (as in fewer hard blocks replaced by more easy repetitions). Also it is possible that stuttering will appear when accessory behaviors such as "successful" postponement devices or word substitutions are no longer being used. It is POSSIBLE that the parents are not giving you the whole or correct story, or telling you what they think you would like to hear. However, I have very rarely found that to be the case. Generally, parents know what is going on. Finally, I would say that it is common for stuttering to gradually diminish and even disappear entirely after rather gentle intervention. I obviously cannot tell you what to do, especially not having seen the youngster, but I rather doubt that I would change a thing at this point. Ken