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From: Peter Reitzes
Date: 05 Oct 2009
Time: 07:13:31 -0500
Remote Name: 165.155.192.75
Joseph, thanks for writing. It has been my experience that many people who stutter will stutter more at the beginning of sessions, and then as the session continues, the stuttering reduces. I will speculate that this may be related to the client becoming comfortable in the session, focusing on speech tools during the session and because of the relationship between the client and the clinician. One of the things I like about pausing is that pausing tends to reduce the frequency of stuttering in such a manner. Pausing seems to have a grounding effect where once a person starts using it, the amount of stuttering tends to reduce and the clustering effect (the back to back stutters) tend to also reduce. Let me also add that on occasion some clients may stutter as much at the end of the session as they do at the beginning. For example, I work with a teen who sometimes comes to speech therapy and just wants to talk – and the teen stutters throughout the session. Other times, this teen comes in and wants to focus on his speech and he will tend to stutter less as the session continues.