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From: Scott Palasik
Date: 20 Oct 2010
Time: 18:07:55 -0500
Remote Name: 131.95.172.211
Heather, Hi! First, we want to welcome you to the field of Speech - Language Pathology! I hope you have enjoyed your journey so far and will continue to learn throughout your career. You ask a great question about how do we encourage parents and other SLPs to openly talk about stuttering. Well, we can start with a question to ourselves: Do we value being honest with ourself and others? If the answer is yes, then that can lead us to talking openly and honestly. It can also lead us to another question, "If we were the person stuttering, and feeling a lone (because stuttering tends to be a lonely disorder) wouldn't we want someone to talk to about it?" Getting in touch with our values can be one of the most important parts of therapy (for the client, the parent, and ourselves as clinicians). How can you encourage this type of behavior (opening up), you can model yourself. You may not stutter personally, however you can relate to parents who have clients who do stutter because you know pain, you know sadness, you know loss (of some kind), you know fear (there are many with stuttering). Sharing some experiences with parents can help them open up to their thoughts...For example, I talked with my mother today about stuttering and this article. I started out by saying, "You know, I've been thinking about how Dad and I didn't really talk about stuttering, even though we both stuttered. That caused me to have feelings of guilt and blame.". From there on, she added her thoughts about her own feelings that she felt. By me opening up with some thoughts of mine it allowed her to feel safe to share her thoughts. We are the guide, which means we can model behaviors(reactions) we would like clients and families to do. Some things you can say and explain to families and other SLPs who are reluctant to talk openly is that by not doing so we are inferring that stuttering is bad, and shouldn't be discussed. We are sending a message to the client that we don't want to talk about this because it makes us uncomfortable...The real question is "why does it make us uncomfortable?" What thoughts lie behind that reaction (thoughts come first then behaviors)?....I don't know if this answered your question or not, please, please let me know if you need me to explain further, I do tend to ramble when I talk about this stuff (counseling, psychology, parents, stuttering, life). Have a wonderful day! Scott