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From: Marlene
Date: 21 Oct 2004
Time: 15:25:12 -0500
Remote Name: 209.161.242.233
Stephanie, this is a difficult question to answer, as each family comes with its own value system and skills. We also have not done any formal research on this. However, we have some clinical hunches about what is least and most effective for families. Quite rarely, we find that some parents reject the philosophy behind the program and find it difficult not to focus directly on the disfluent speech and to reduce demands. When this happens, we try to help them analyse and understand their own resistance, but are not always successful. We have found that parents find it fairly easy to start observing their children differently, and most adjust their interaction styles. Often the peer discussions help parents alter their mind sets substantially and the feedback we frequently get is that the PFWS changed the way they parent their children. We find that if the family is comfortable becoming child-centred and becomes better at being responsive in their listening, it seems to be very helpful to the child. However, learning to monitor their own speech model can be difficult, so we build in a lot of strategies and practice to ensure this carryover. Slowing down speech rate is also very difficult for some parents, and some find themselves only slowing down when they hear the child stutter. One of our biggest challenges is the early morning rush, getting ready for school, but we try to empower families to problem solve this individually. If we feel that there are family issues that we cannot manage in the program, we do make referrals to other agencies (e.g. for managing behaviour or for marriage counseling). Hope this answers your question. Marlene