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From: Evan Sherman
Date: 15 Oct 2010
Time: 14:11:19 -0500
Remote Name: 128.230.79.52
Hey Peter, great posting. You know, I had never thought of the term "fluency" as problem term until reading your posting. It's funny because an important aspect of therapy, if not THE most important, is facilitating a sense of acceptance of ones self as a person who stutters through decreasing negative feelings and emotions. One thing that happens when we start accepting ourselves is we decrease our use of avoidances, whether they be stressful situations, or persistent use of interjections. As SLP's, or SLP students, when we use the term "fluency" it seems to me that we ourselves are avoiding. We are using the term "fluency" to avoid using the actual term "stuttering". If we do this, how will our clients ever really be able to be open about their own stuttering and advertise themselves as "people who stutter". If we ourselves can't call it for what it is,how do we expect our clients to? How, will they ever be able to say, "Hi, Im ______ and I am a person who stutters?", if we ourselves cant even call it stuttering? Our use of terminology is so important. What about the term "disfluency"? Do feel this widely used term needs to be addressed? When we say "disfluency", or "decreasing disfluencies" in a therapy objective, are we getting to the root of the problem? As people who stutter, we will be "disfluent" from time to time depending on our severity, but is that the correct term or are we avoiding again?