My workshop for the kids 7-9 worked out really well. We had 5 boys who stutter and two brothers who don't stutter. We had 1.5 hours for the workshop. A few SLPs and students were in the room. One SLP was there to support her participating client. The SLPs observed without offering input. They LOVED what they saw! I thought I'd share with you what I did. I got a lot of the ideas from the 'Shame Busting' material Bill Murphy present at ASHA last year. I did a lot of easy voluntary stuttering throughout, and focused on eye contact with them. It was a great session!! Maybe some of you have already done these kinds of things, but it's all new to me!
After this, I said to them "I see lots and lots of wonderful things that you're good at here, and I'm thinking of something else that no one mentioned that you guys are THE EXPERTS at. Who knows what it is?" They guessed:
Being friends
Talking
Being brave
and then one adorable little guy said: STUTTERING!!!
I made a big fuss about that by pointing out how THEY are the stuttering experts and no one else knows more about stuttering than they do. I then asked them to pretend I was an alien who didn't know what stuttering is and who would like to come up and demonstrate some stuttering. About half of them did, and it was fun. With my prompting, they made long, short, big, and little stutters. A lot of fun and great desensitization.