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From: Russ Hicks
Date: 03 Oct 2006
Time: 02:23:02 -0500
Remote Name: 71.252.204.114
Howdy from Texas Danielle! ..... Thanks for your kind words and excellent questions. You took the time to ask them, so I will definitely take the time to answer them. ..... You asked about possible earlier childhood therapy. There are two parts to that answer. First when I was growing up in the 1940's and 50's - when the earth's crust was still cooling - the world was an entirely different place. What we knew about stuttering back then was totally inadequate to be really effective. So if I had therapy back then knowing what was known back then, it wouldn't have helped. ..... Second, if we would have had the knowledge and therapy we have TODAY, then yes, definitely it would have helped a great deal. In my opinion, the "sea change" in stuttering therapy came with the understanding of the stuttering iceberg. See my paper on this topic at http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad6/papers/hicks6.html . Unless you treat then ENTIRE stuttering problem, your efforts are futile. But if you can work effectively underneath the waterline of the iceberg, you can literally accomplish miracles! ..... Regarding the camp, I absolutely LOVED it! Even though it didn't help my stuttering, the camp and the people up there were amazing. One of my "speech correctionists" (as we called them back then) left camp for a week to become Miss Pennsylvania in the Miss America pageant. My swimming coach was an Olympic Silver Medalist. The camp was filled with the most remarkable people you've ever met. I grew up there. It was a totally amazing experience. ..... Would my life have been different if I had never gone to camp? Absolutely. Would it have been different if I had never stuttered or have been born a girl? Of course. But I guess I'll never know. I just feel VERY lucky to have attended that camp regardless of the impact on my speech. Read the short papers written in this conference about stuttering in Africa. We have no concept of how lucky we are! ..... Stress... Hmmm... I'm not sure how to answer that. Stress plays a part in everyone's lives, both for good and bad. I always felt stress to succeed and never really accepted the "victim mentality" that some people have these days. If we can learn to apply stress for the GOOD and not let it destroy us, that's the key to success. But it's not as easy as it sounds. That's an extremely good question and it needs lots of further thought and discussion. What do YOU think? ..... Good luck in school, Danielle! You're going to be a wonderful SLP one day! Even though I'm from Texas, I <heart> New York! What a wonderful, exciting world up there! ..... My very best to you! ..... Russ