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From: Jennifer Delaney
Date: 13 Oct 2010
Time: 09:39:38 -0500
Remote Name: 67.166.240.187
Wow, where to begin. . .your paper and both your responses are incredibly thought provoking! The comment that kid’s need fun in their lives is definitely true (maybe even more so for a child struggling with something like “disfluency”). As you pointed out, parents most often come to the table with so much confusion and anxiety that they don’t know how, or may not yet have the ability, to bridge “fun” with their often desperate attempts to use newly acquired techniques/ideas to help their child. Your practice of keeping the parents and children's sessions separate until you feel everyone is on the same page is brilliant. After all, if most agree that it is the parent’s daily support of young CWS and their home implementation of the therapist’s techniques that make the largest and longest impact, then why wouldn’t the family be the starting point? Could either of you shed some light as to why many clinicians may prefer joint sessions or sessions with the client only? Also, since most graduate programs for speech pathology do not specifically train a student in counseling, did either of you engage in any formal training elsewhere that taught you how to “keep yourselves from losing sleep each night thinking about clients/families” while engaging in this highly emotional and therapeutic dance of sharing, understanding and providing options (especially since you can relate so deeply)? Thank you for taking the extra time to thoughtfully reply to all the conference participants.