Shady Trailers, Hats Off To Thee

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Re: Shady Trialers...

From: Russ Hicks
Date: 10/21/01
Time: 3:16:35 PM
Remote Name: 24.4.254.203

Comments

Hi Kris,

You gotta remember that my experiences at Shady Trails were in the mid-Jurassic era, when dinosaurs roamed the earth! <smile> Things were a LOT more primitive back then, in the 50's.

The main type of therapy used at Shady Trails in those days was an ancestor of today's "fluency shaping" techniques. We used what we called "speech controls" to increase our fluency. These controls included slow speech, relaxation, phrasing, blending, proper breathing, and controlling my secondary symptoms. No mention was ever made of stuttering modification or emotional issues. The aim back then was to GET RID of the stuttering and become FLUENT! Nothing else mattered. And as long as I continued to use these almost impossible-to-sustain controls, my fluency was pretty good. I can do that FOR A SHORT TIME even to this day, nearly 50 years later!

The parting words from camp was simply to continue to work hard (and harder...) and never give up on trying to achieve perfect fluency. If you failed to do this, it was your fault. You simply didn't work hard enough or didn't CARE enough to REALLY want good fluency. That sort of a "good bye and good luck" approach failed almost all the time for the vast majority of stutterers. You really developed a sense of failure a couple of months after camp when you realized that you were right back where you started - after all that work and all that money. Then you either gave up completely or kept on going back to camp year after year. As you can tell, we weren't very smart back in those days. I kept going back to camp four times in seven years, and never was able to sustain any degree of fluency for more than a month or so after camp. Talk about pounding my head against a stone wall! But we just didn't know anything else to do.

Only when stuttering modification and emotional support issues started to be addressed in later years, did stuttering therapy began to make any significant progress in the long term. Maybe SOME of my fellow campers improved. I don't honestly know, but I doubt it. That may explain why I have never been able to contact a single one of them. It remains a mystery to this day...

Thanks for your interest, Kris!

Russ


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