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From: Dori
Date: 04 Oct 2004
Time: 11:05:01 -0500
Remote Name: 65.73.101.79
Hello all, thank you for participating in this conference! This is the Dori that wrote "What I Wished I Had Known." Over the past several months, Eli has started to take on some "secondary" behaviors which are making it even more difficult to understand his speech. He is turning and twisting his head and making sort of a gurgling noises as he speaks. He is not wanting to go back into therapy at this time (we just quit about six weeks ago after three months with a therapist who had no experience and little knowledge with stuttering. All of these behaviors surfaced during and since that experience.) He gets along pretty well with his friends (we homeschool) so fortunately we don't have the teasing/bulling issue to deal with. It's hard to get an eight-year old to really express how he feels, but I know it is frustrating to him. I'm torn between concern for the negative progression his stuttering is taking, and just wanting to let him be and enjoy him for who he is. Of the five therapists we've seen, only one was really qualified, and she is 45 minutes away. So that brings on a whole set of questions…. Is it helpful to take him to therapy if he doesn't want to go? Do I disrupt our lives (he also has two brothers) and call that much attention to this by dedicating 3-hours drive time and 1 hour of therapy each week to the issue? What type of therapy would be most appropriate at this time? I don't believe an eight-year old kid has the capacity to dedicate the effort necessary to integrate fluency tools (even stuttering modification tools) into his speech the way a teen or adult might have. I could just go on and on, but I'll thow it your way for the moment. HELP! And again, thank you oh so much for participating in this conference! Dori