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From: Bobby Childers
Date: 10/21/01
Time: 1:43:23 AM
Remote Name: 216.234.195.39
Enjoli:
You shouldn’t feel saddened about the rudeness that occurs to me unless you feel sad whenever it occurs to anyone else in the world. Rudeness is a part of human nature and will continue to exist until there are no more humans left on earth.
Being a PWS, I sometimes feel that I receive more than my fair share of rudeness, but I have no proof, as I have seen other people get more than their fair share also.
A support system is essential to the stuttering client and their family/friends as they travel through the therapy sessions. It gives the client a place to try out the techniques without fear of judgment, and it helps the family/friends in that they can see their loved one(s) improving their speech and more important their attitudes towards their speech. For some people the support system (in some manner) will need to be in place for a long time, for others, it is a ladder on the way to what they perceive as success. Either way though a support system of some sort should be in place in all types of speech therapy. It will help the client and it will help the SLP (student SLP’s) as they too can gain knowledge from the system.
As for my previous therapists, I still feel that they were doing the best they knew how at the time, with the knowledge they had. Even my first therapist back in grade school (the one who kept telling me I was bad), probably felt that she was doing me a favor and trying to help. That was a sign of the times, and the location where my therapy was occurring. (We had just acquired cars; pickup trucks though had been around for a few million years or so).
When I wrote the paper, I was afraid of scaring off student SLP’s, so I am grateful that you found it inspiring. Use your newfound inspiration to increase your knowledge of stuttering, the attitudes associated with stuttering, and you will soon be able to inspire someone else to improve their speech and attitudes. Most people who stutter will always stutter to some degree, but with help from students like yourself and the other SLP’s, we will learn to stutter more easily, and feel less self-conscious about it.
Thank you
Bobby