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From: Bobby Childers
Date: 10/16/01
Time: 7:50:34 PM
Remote Name: 216.234.193.75
T. Pickens:
My first encounters with speech therapy occurred many, many moons ago (dinosaurs were still alive), and being rather young, I didn’t put much stock into the whole mess.
Later when I went back to therapy in my teenage years, that did sour me somewhat to the point that I waited almost 20 years to try again. The psychologist who tried to help me with my speech really didn’t know anything about stuttering, but she did try to teach me relaxation techniques that still work once in a while, but not often. She didn’t even try to delve into the psychological aspects of the stuttering which I think now may have been the route to try.
But that experience ended in summer of 1993, and I didn’t try again until spring 2000. Partly because there were no SLP’s in my hometown (population 20,000 people and 125,000 cattle, plus untold numbers of rattlesnakes), and partly because the psychologist began trying to get me to believe that I was sexually abused as a child and that caused my stuttering. I personally felt that she was grasping at straws, and didn’t know what else to do. So I quit seeing her posthaste.
Now that I have been out of therapy for a few months now, I wish that I would have gotten out of the clinical setting more often to practice on the “real world” techniques with a coach nearby. But since my clinicians and myself were all students, time is rather short, so you make do.
What may help in the university clinical setting would be to have 3-4 of the student clinicians go out with their clients at the same time in a group. Then the clients will have the support of being with other stutterers, and more clinicians. This may give some of the clients more of a “push” to try and expand their verbal communication skills. Some clients though will balk at the thought of going in a group, so those you would have to deal with on a case-by-case basis.
This might work extremely well with younger children and even teenagers, as they feel safer in a group setting anyway. The adults will be more difficult because they have jobs and families to support, but they might be able to find a free hour or so once in a while to try a “group outing”.
But no matter what type of therapy is being taught, the SLP needs to ensure the client understands that the SLP is a coach, a cheerleader, and the first rung of the support ladder. With email being so prevalent these days, you might setup an email account on one of the free providers to give to your clients. This way any email in that account would be from one of your clients. You could spend a few minutes reading what ever is there and give a quick response. Your time is valuable too (especially if you are a student), but spending 10-15 minutes every few days wouldn’t be too bad, and it would help the client feel not quite so alone. But every client is a whole new case, so you will have to experiment somewhat and see what works best for both of you.
Good luck with your studies. I’m sure that once you do finish school, that you will join the ranks of my student clinicians in SLP sainthood.
Bobby