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From: William Rosenthal
Date: 07 Oct 2006
Time: 14:20:35 -0500
Remote Name: 67.169.60.208
I would start with the assumption that parents are in the majority of cases good hearted and want to help their children. The problem is that they do not know how, and often their past efforts have been ineffective. Consequently, they are frusrated and withdraw from the problem. They are on 'automatic' and their responses to their children reflect that. Now, there is a principle that I would like you to adopt. That is, it is very difficult to suppress undesirable behavior. Counseling a parent to NOT do some behavior, or to not say some particular thing is very likely to fail. What needs to happen is for the old, undesirable behavior to be replaced with something new. I have had success in bringing parents into the therapy room and modeling for them how I would like them to respond to their child's stuttering. Then I have them do what I do, and tactfully correct them until they have got it solid. There are, of course, instances in which parents are unapproachable, will not participate, and will not change their behavior. Those instances are few, but when they occur you may have to consider not doing therapy with the child. If parent participation is spelled out at the beginning as an expectation of the treatment program, that is less likely to happen. Good question! -WSR