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From: Scott
Date: 06 Oct 2012
Time: 12:32:25 -0500
Remote Name: 76.17.183.48
Hi Catherine - Thanks so much for your post. It's funny, I just finished writing a response to Annette about helping parents have hope, and then I opened (I just typed "hopened" ;-) your post and found that it was on the same thing. Yes, exactly - people need to have hope, whether it's the parents, the kids, the clinicians, the school teacher, or even the peers. A big part of developing hope is having an accurate understanding of the condition... If I may speak (type) candidly for a moment, I think that too many clinicians simply don't understand stuttering. They think that the only viable or appropriate outcome from therapy is fluent speech. Of course, fluency is a fine thing - there's nothing wrong with fluency. But, focusing on fluency without addressing the rest of the condition leaves the child (and parent) with a lopsided view of what is important in communication. So, more to your point - what about this idea that we have to tell parents that there is no cure for stuttering. It is true - there is no cure for stuttering. But, stuttering is not the only communication disorder for which is the case. There's no cure for apraxia. There's no cure for autism. There's no cure for aphasia. There's no cure for *most* of the disorders in our field, yet clinicians do not feel the same level of insecurity about those other conditions as they do about stuttering. That's why I think the main issue is a misunderstanding of the true nature of stuttering. It's okay that there's no cure for stuttering. Sure, it would be nice if there were - and I certainly don't intend to minimize the difficult experiences that many people who stutter have. But, recognizing that stuttering does not have to stand in a child's way (i.e., regaining a sense of hope) can help parents and SLPs and kids themselves view the condition differently. It does not have to be a burden - though of course it often is, and the goal of speech therapy should be to minimize that burden. So, yes, we can tell parents that there's no cure, and we can also tell them that the child does not have to be held back in his life because of it. It's okay to stutter - and the sooner that parents, children, and SLPs recognize that, the better able we will be, as a profession, to meet the challenge that we currently face. Thanks again for your post! As you can see, I enjoy spouting off about these things ;-) Scott