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From: Cathrin (student)
Date: 11 Oct 2006
Time: 18:54:27 -0500
Remote Name: 68.66.15.91
Your article has given me a whole new perspective on our role as clinicians, as facilitators of change. By consciously using more positive and descriptive language to refer to our clients, we can change how our clients, their families and even the world view stuttering and hopefully gradually reduce the “negative” stigma associated with it. We can be the engines for change; we can be the first to model acceptance, understanding and respect by using more appropriate terms and hopefully others (parents, teachers etc.) will follow. It is our job to consider our clients first before their disorder and therefore I see that it is critical to use descriptive language to describe stuttering behavior instead of vague labels like mild, moderate, and severe. As we educate families on the causes of stuttering (the child’s constitutional predispositions, environmental and developmental stresses etc.) and remind them that their child’s stuttering is not their fault, why not say to the parents who refer to their child as a stutterer, that I prefer to refer to your child as a person who stutters thereby reiterating to them that the concept that stuttering is only a small part of what makes up their child. That way, we may gradually reduce the chance that stuttering will eventually take over that child’s whole self-image as it did for you. Thank you for enlightening me.