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From: Joe Mirly
Date: 03 Oct 2005
Time: 23:34:29 -0500
Remote Name: 67.168.86.109
Hi Erin, Thanks for the kind words. Good questions as well - put your reading glasses on and hope that I make at least a little sense. The "therapy" that I endured when in grade school was not very effective. The SLP gave my teacher a stop-watch with the instruction that every time I stuttered or blocked the teacher would raise her hand to stop me from continuing - for 15 seconds - then the teacher would lower her hand and I could begin again. If I started to stutter again the hand would go up, I'd have to wait, then start again. This could go on for awhile, of course in front of the other students in class who didn't know what was going on. Pretty helpful huh?! This wasn't all, I also got to talk into a tape recorder (reel-to-reel) and listen to myself stutter. What a treat! :-) So from a school perspective it would have eased my notion of being different and made going to the SLP much more pleasant if I weren't being blatently called to task at every disfluency. I'm assuming this approach has changed, at least I hope it has. Making it fun is important, keeping the children engaged and talking. As far as parents drawing attention to their child's stuttering - I think there may be different answers depending on the child's age, the severity of the speech, and the sensitivity of the child. I'll tell you a little of my experience with my son. My son was diagnosed as a person who stuttered when he was 5, though he is fairly mild (in my opinion). He is going to speech therapy at his elementary school but we haven't put a label of "stuttering" on it for him. He has tons of confidence and talks constantly. What he learns from the SLP are good speaking habits, like taking turns, not interrupting, thinking before you speak, etc. He's had some improvement, though is still disfluent when he's excited, hungry, or tired. Whether the child's speech is labeled stuttering or not, I think the more important factor is the parent's actions and/or reactions to the disfluency. The parents really need to learn about stuttering and good communication techniques early on. The child really needs the parent there for support and encouraging words. Make sure the kid knows the parent is listening to what they are saying, not just how they are saying it. Just as with fluent children, they need to be communicated with - not at. The parents have much more time with the child than the SLP does, and need to be a reliable source of support. So far so good with my son, I haven't seen any signs of fear or embarassment from him. Hopefully the "baggage" stays light! Sorry if I'm not answering your questions directly - and that I'm getting a little long-winded. Should the parents call out the stuttering? - depends. If they do it shouldn't be called out as "bad", just different. We talk about differences all the time - everybody is different. Different hair color, skin color, likes, dislikes, favorite foods, fast, slow, tall, short, brown eyes, blue eys, etc. Some people talk really smoothly and some talk bumpier. It is just one of our characteristics, certainly not the thing that defines us. That helps the child to understand, and lessens the impact of being "different", at least in my opinion. Again it is how the parents present and reinforce it that will make the biggest impact. How the child views himself or herself will impact their interest in visiting the school SLP. They'll be much less resistant if they have good self-esteem and get the support they need at home. On the other hand if they are constantly admonished and embarassed then you've a long way to go to get the child engaged in therapy. I think I'm done talking now, I hope you were able to get something out of it. :-) Joe