[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Walt Manning
Date: 20 Oct 2010
Time: 17:21:04 -0500
Remote Name: 141.225.97.59
I had a similar reaction that Ken in his response to your question, which is a good one I think. Somewhere in the text (can't remember where just now) I indicate that clinicians too often indicate, both verbally and non-verbally that fluency is "good" and stuttering is "bad". What is "good" I think, and what we should be more interested in reinforcing, is the speaker's ability to manage their speech, be it forms of fluency or stuttering. Children, for example, begin to feel that they are "the boss of their own mouth." They begin to have a choice about how they are speaking. Once they are desensitized to stuttering and speaking they are to choose how to use their speech mechanism and produce speech in an easier, more efficient, and more enjoyable manner. Parents and spouses and teachers also need to understand that there are different forms of stuttering - some much better than others and that fluency, at the cost of sounding unnatural isn't necessary better than some forms of easy, effortless stuttering.