PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT
Rationale: As the child is in therapy only two-three times weekly, the parents
must involve themselves in the treatment process to assure maximum progress.
Parental communicative style and communicative feelings of guilt, fear and
anger must be dealt with through the therapeutic process.
Activities/Techniques:
- Several parent-clinician conferences should be scheduled. During
these conferences, parental fears, guilt and anger should be
assessed and managed appropriately. Parents must be given the
time and freedom to express their feelings.
- Discuss normal disfluency and normal language development,
focusing upon the following developmental areas necessary for the
production of fluent speech:
- motor coordination and timing
- linguistic and cognitive knowledge
- emotional maturity
- View the film "Stuttering and Your Child" (Speech Foundation of
of America, 1977) with the parents, providing feedback and answers
to any questions which may result.
- Ask parents to assess how they are responding to their child's
dysfluencies. Present Cooper's Parent Attitudes Toward Stuttering
Checklist (Cooper, 1986) or Zwitman's Child Management
Questionnaires and Checklist (Zwitman, 1978). These checklists
are helpful to facilitate parental awareness and change.
- Explain the importance of parental involvement. Be sure to
provide concrete examples of how parents can become effectively
involved in the therapeutic process.
- View the film "Prevention of Stuttering - Part II" (Speech
Foundation of America). When their child stutters, he/she can
detect the listener's reaction through both their words and their
non-verbal actions. If the child detects negative feelings, the
result may be a negative attitude about himself/herself, their
speech, or both. This may cause the child to stutter more
severely and more frequently. Therefore, it is important for the
parent to react the same for both fluent as well as dysfluent
utterances from the child. An increase in attentiveness when the
child stutters may reinforce the behavior.
- Provide the parents with information they can take home. Booklets
and pamphlets are invaluable sources of information. The
following are suggested reading for parents and teachers:
(a) "If Your Child Stutters: Speech Foundation of America
A Guide for Parents" P.O. Box 11749
Memphis, TN 38111
(b) "A Brochure for Parents John Ahlbach
of Children Who Stutter National Stuttering Project
1269 Seventh Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94122
(c) "The Stutterer in the Ellin S. Rind, M.S.
Classroom" Stuttering Resource Foundation
123 Oxford Road
New Rochelle, NY 10801
(d) "To the Parents of the Peter R. Ramig, Ph.D
Nonfluent Child" Dept. of Communication
Disorders and Speech Science
University of Colorado
Campus Box 409
Boulder, CO 80309
(e) "To the Teacher of the Peter R. Ramig, Pd.D - as above
Nonfluent Child"
(f) "Does Your Child Stutter?" Peter R. Ramig, Pd.D - as above
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