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From: Joseph Dewey
Date: 05 May 2010
Time: 20:44:50 -0500
Remote Name: 63.82.19.2
Hi Jessica, excellent question. Since there is a lot more cluttering awareness today, I think that I'd take a little different approach than my parents did. There were good things and bad things with their approach. Good things: 1) My parents always told me I was smart, so I always thought I was smart, and never connected intelligence to intelligibility. 2) I developed an insanely intense desire to improve my speech on my own, 3) I don't have any outside negativity associated with breakdowns of my speech. Bad things: 1) I never realized why I had a hard time talking to people, 2) I was completely surprised when I found out I had a speech disorder, and 3) I could have started working on my speech years before had I known about it. So, if I were a parent of someone with cluttering, I would definitely reinforce that they're super smart, and help them develop in the areas they're smart in. I'd be super careful with telling them that they needed to fix their speech, because then they're only doing it because they feel bad, not because they really want to improve. I'd do a lot of non-threatening, patterning games, where I challenged my child to speak after the good patterns I provided them. And, I think that everyone can improve their speech. I think the best thing a parent of a clutterer can do is have a huge desire to improve their own speech, and then their child will naturally pick up on that, and will want to be like their parent.