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From: Rosemarie
Date: 19 Oct 2010
Time: 16:43:01 -0500
Remote Name: 86.129.241.142
Hi June, it’s very difficult to answer your first question if parents don’t want to be involved in therapy or if they don’t think their child has a problem then I don’t think we can make them participate. Sometimes parents are really not able to participate through a variety of personal reasons and wish for some member of the childcare or teaching staff to help their child. If there is consistency of staff and it is possible to train them how to work with the child then stuttering therapy can be done with them but in my experience this rarely works as well as with the parents. So the parents are always the first choice. Your second question suggests that you have a very different picture in your head about how therapy happens to what actually happens when using the LP. When the therapist demonstrates an aspect of treatment to the parent he or she does this by doing it with the child and in this way not only does the clinician demonstrate something but also finds out how the child responds to it, what’s the best way to do it, what sort of equipment or activities to use etc. When the therapist invites the parent to have a go the parent just takes over the session in a relaxed sort of way and the child carries on (hopefully) enjoying it. Any feedback given to the parent by the therapist is done in a way that is supportive and appropriate for the child to hear. It can be a very different way of working to what people are used to but it is surprisingly easy to learn when you enjoy cooperative working. As therapy progresses and parents become more confident they often teach us things about how to make the treatment interesting for the child. Best wishes