[ Contents | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Walt Manning
Date: 10/15/02
Time: 10:00:47 AM
Remote Name: 141.225.97.53
Bob- I don't know if there has even been an ISAD paper at any of the conferences to date that engendered as much (emotional) response. And for good reason. When you first showed me the original letter my reactions ranged from Retz's duke-it-out anger to Russ's wonderfully humorous interpretation. As one who teaches courses and conducts workshops on fluency disorders we're faced with somehow enabeling our non-stuttering students to GET IT. I've done what Steve has done for many years and required pseudostuttering activities - we've called ourselves the "stuttering mall rats" and paried up to do this scary thing together. It's a start. But how to really know what it's like to be someone who stutters. It makes me think, as a white male, what is it REALLY like to be female, black, etc, etc. Everything else being equal - which it never is - it's easier to connect to someone who has traveled the same journey as you. But even if we haven't been on the same trail as another (pick the trail - alcohol and drugs, cancer, divorce, loss of a loved one, disease, war, etc.)we can do our best to listen and understand the other person's story. As difficult as it is, we can give up our expert status and LISTEN. Then we can try to provide this person with what THEY think they need from us rather than having a prescribed, predetermined answer ready for them. That eventually leads to greater fluency and a less handicapped life. I guess that means that we and our students must become professionals rather than technicians that produce fluency by some method that "works". My early clinicians turned me off because, while they understood stuttering (surface stuff) they didn't understand me and what I was facing and avoiding (or if they did undestand they didn't communicate that to me). So I often ask my students to respond to the question: What will you say when you when a PWS tells you "You don't understand because you don't stutter?".
Bob - Thanks for your courage and creativity in reaponding to such a narrow-minded view of the stuttering experience. It's nice to see some good come out of it.