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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 16 Oct 2012
Time: 18:28:46 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.15.121
Hi Alan, It's very nice to hear from you in this thread. I always enjoy your posts on the ISAD conferences, stutt-l, and elsewhere. I find them thoughtful, courteous, and useful. I liked your comment about validating listening to young people as a means of helping them establish their belief systems without developing problems of self-esteem. I never really thought about it that way, but will do so now. As you probably know, I have been entrenched in studying public attitudes toward stuttering for more than a decade now with colleagues all around the world. We are beginning to get around to studying the attitudes of children. For example, in Turkey, Sertan Ozdemir found that the attitudes of 6th grade children toward stuttering were virtually identical to those of their mothers, fathers, grandparents or adult relatives, and neighbors. In these cases, it seems that the children simply adopted the attitudes of the adults in their lives. In any case, I suspect that the children's views were validated. The trick, if we are to "improve" public attitudes toward stuttering and other human attributes in children, is to do so without promoting lowered self-esteem. As for enlisting my help as a clinician, how much to I need to pay you? <smiley face> Ken