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From: Lynne Shields
Date: 16 Oct 2012
Time: 11:59:51 -0500
Remote Name: 86.163.102.46
Dear Jessica, You have asked some very good questions. It is my feeling that parental involvement is quite important in working with school aged children in most cases. There are so many ways in which they may be involved that I won't try to get into all of them. Certainly, it is important for parents or other caregivers to be educated about stuttering in general, their child's stuttering, and ways to manage stuttering. This includes ways that family members may be supportive of their child who stutters. Best practices with school age children who stutter include treating the entire family whenever possible, so the entire focus or responsibility is not on the child, but is shared. There are many good resources for involving family members. At the moment, I am visiting at the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children in London, and they have published information about working with families. They have some quite nice resources on their website. That is one of many places to gain great information. There are several other papers on this conference that may give you some great ideas of ways to involve parents. I see much better progress when families are willing and able to be involved. I think it is probably more difficult to achieve family involvement when the child is being treated in public schools, but I know a number of school-based SLPs have come up with creative ways to involve parents, including before school coffees, Saturday family days periodically during a school year, and so forth. Perhaps others will share some ideas about this with you, as well. Best wishes, Lynne