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From: Peter Reitzes
Date: 04 Oct 2005
Time: 19:22:36 -0500
Remote Name: 69.22.238.4
Thanks for the questions Elizabeth. I have used voluntary stuttering, in public, with children as young as seven. During my first year as a speech pathologist in the schools I worked with five boys who stuttered in a group setting. All five students were between the ages of seven to ten. All five used voluntary stuttering, in public, to practice stuttering modification tools. We used voluntary stuttering first in the therapy room, then during role-play situations using my school’s stage, and then in public. Whether in school or in public, I always stuttered first to create a safe environment and to teach by example. Out of this group of five, I felt that three of the students would benefit from desensitization goals by using “hard” or noticeable voluntary stuttering. One student who was nine had no difficulty stuttering in a “hard” manner and he felt that stuttering in public was a small price to pay to get to leave school and eat donuts. One student who had just turned eight was truly challenged by this assignment and benefited both from doing the stuttering and from watching his friend and speech teacher also stutter on purpose. I never asked the third student to participate, even though I felt it would help him, because at that time I believed it had the potential to cause him unnecessary and even serious emotional pain. This student had some huge family issues going on at the time, was very ashamed of his stuttering, and I did not feel it was appropriate to push him to use voluntary stuttering for desensitization purposes. The four seven year olds I work with now in my school are nowhere near the point in which I would ask them to use voluntary stuttering in public. We do use a lot of “pretend” stuttering or purposeful “sticky speech” to explore how we stutter in speech class. I have used forms of voluntary stuttering with children as young as three to explore speech. One three year old who I worked with was able to teach his “Dora the Explorer” doll how to smooth out our “bumpy talk.” For example, I would stutter on a word and ask this child to have his doll show me how to say it in a smoother manner. Using his doll, this child would then teach his mother and I how to smooth out our “bumpy talk.” His mother, who was a speech pathologist herself, was truly pleased when her son would stutter for real on a word and smooth-out of it using his “Dora talk.” By practicing purposeful stuttering in a smooth and easy manner this young child began transferring this skill to his spontaneous speech.