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From: Joseph Dewey
Date: 17 Oct 2005
Time: 00:59:31 -0500
Remote Name: 24.10.232.18
Hi Amy. Thanks for asking me this question and allowing me to elaborate on this. From what I've heard and seen with clutterers, they are extremely hard to motivate to improve their speech, because they don't recognize that they have a speech problem. So, what this would typically result in is a parent trying to convince the child that they have a speech problem. That usually results in the child rebelling and feeling self conscious about their speech in an unproductive way. Children learn most from their parents by modeling what their parents do, rather than by doing what their parents say. So, if a parent is really interested in improving their speech then a child will model that interest. And, there are many ways to improve your speech, and everyone can do things to improve their speech, even things like taking a public speaking class, learning new words, or reading poetry. So, if a parent is focused on improving their speech in any way, then they will transfer that desire to improve their speech on to their cluttering child in an extremely positive way. Also, I think that a lot of the more effective cluttering therapies could be useful for everyone, so I think that it could be a beneficial exercise for parents in addition to being inspiring for their children, to do the cluttering therapy exercises with their children. This is actually really similar to SLP's modeling correct speech for their clients, but it's taking it a step farther, and having parents model a desire to improve their speech to their children.