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From: Sarah Swoger, Graduate Student
Date: 07 Oct 2011
Time: 13:07:13 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.14.241
Dr. Eldridge and Mr. Retzinger, thank you for your interesting article. I think you really highlighted some important factors that would make this treatment successful and attractive to teenagers. I think it is very important that you stressed the importance of the parents in this program. From what I am learning in my graduate stuttering course, parents are crucial to their children's success in stuttering therapy, especially in the younger population. I think it is important that they remain important in therapy. Regardless of teenagers’ age and their reluctance to communicate with their parents at that age, parents are still important role models in their lives and could probably make a huge impact in their therapy. Also, I love the idea of teletherapy because of the high-tech society that we live in today. I think this aspect of therapy will help many teenagers generalize the treatment more effectively into the real world. My understanding is that you are not emphasizing speech techniques as much in this model and are focusing more on reducing the fear of stuttering and talking. My thoughts are that this would involve a lot of desensitization. I know some desensitization activities would include stuttering on purpose to different individuals. I just feel like many individuals would need a push from their speech pathologist to complete such activities and may even need to see their speech pathologist stutter on purpose to a complete stranger. My question is do you think they could get the same support that they needed if you were conducting therapy via internet? Also, would this be something that the parents could help take part in?