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From: Mark Bulger
Date: 14 Oct 2011
Time: 14:17:28 -0500
Remote Name: 72.93.188.100
Michael - great comment. Great to see some clear-headed thinking in this notoriously fuzzy-headed field. For those who don't know, Wendell Johnson taught that stuttering was produced by parents and others responding incorrectly to normal childhood speaking errors. As a result of his assertion, and his great influence in the field, for decades people were told to ignore a young child's stuttering, and therapists refused to work with young children for fear of making their stutter worse. This practice has been entirely rejected, and now the rule is to work with children as soon as possible in an effort to prevent the incipient stutter from becoming chronic. Theory really does matter.