Stuttering Well: The Clinician's Use of Positive Language

[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]


Re: Positive Language

From:
Date: 18 Oct 2006
Time: 10:58:48 -0500
Remote Name: 165.155.128.131

Comments

Shaundrika, you ask some interesting questions. You ask, “What are some ways that we can begin having parents incorporate positive language if they have negative views in regards to their child’s stuttering?” Modeling positive language with clients and parents is vital, in my opinion. I like to reframe how stuttering is viewed and discussed through modeling. Generally, I do not start by asking parents to use positive language, instead I SHOW them how to replace or exchange negative language with positive language. If a parent just does not “catch on,” I may then have a direct conversation concerning positive language. You ask, “What are some ways that positive language has personally affected your life as a person who stutters?” I feel that hearing positive language and then beginning to use positive language, along with attending self-help meetings, helped me to feel and think differently about stuttering. As a stutterer, is can be very powerful to walk into a room at a self-help conference and meet several hundred other stutterers. Reframing how I thought and spoke about stuttering was also very powerful in that it made stuttering and all of the things I did to avoid stuttering feel “normal.” Positive language helped me to view stuttering in a different, more productive manner. You also ask about incorporating positive language with specific treatment approaches that you are learning about in graduate school. My feeling is that positive language should be compatible with any therapy approach. Having said that, I have observed one clinician who occasionally used negative language during a session in a way that I assumed was both a motivational technique and a punishment. Basically, the clinician would occasionally respond to an adult’s stuttering as ‘sounding like a baby’ or ‘sounding silly.’ After the client stuttered, the clinician would occasionally say something like, “Don’t use that baby talk, try it the way I showed you.” Perhaps such a clinician as the one I just described would be against the use of positive language, but I would still argue that the speaking strategies the clinician was teaching could have easily been used alongside of positive language. While I did not and do not condone the negative language used by this clinician, it is a good example of a therapy approach that may be opposed to positive language.


Last changed: 10/22/06