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From: Rosemarie
Date: 19 Oct 2010
Time: 17:09:50 -0500
Remote Name: 86.137.241.238
Hello Ed and Nan, I apologize for my late response but unexpected family events have kept me away from my computer for a few days. I endorse Nan’s responses. I don’t think Ed, that I have ever met the sort of parent or toxic home environment that you describe. If such parents exist then sadly, their children are likely to have other problems in addition to stuttering and are likely to come to the attention of a multidisciplinary team. I have seen many hundreds of parents over the years and my overriding impression is that they are caring and are doing the best they can with the daunting task of bringing up their children. Over 30 years ago I worked with adults who stuttered in a centre where we saw a large number of people from a wide range of backgrounds and from all over the country. Just now and again one of these people would have experienced some form of cruelty in their childhood that particularly impacted on their speaking. They were the exception then and they are, thankfully, even rarer now. Van Riper wrote about stuttering in a time when parenting was slowly moving away from authoritarian regimes and more child-centered approaches were slowly taking their place. Also, here in the UK we have mandatory training in child protection and so have a professional duty to act upon any indications of child cruelty, it is not an option to ignore such things. If you are thinking of milder forms of abuse then I think, as Nan requested, it is helpful to describe what you are thinking of and avoid the use of words like ‘toxic’ which carry very strong implications. Rosemarie