Stuttering
therapy is much more than teaching someone to "talk slower". SLPs use
the following approaches when treating a person who stutters.
- Stuttering
Modification Therapy –
where SLPs teach you to stutter “more fluently” with less tension and
struggle, learn to stutter in a more relaxed manner which
will help you be more fluent.
- Fluency
Shaping Therapy- where SLPs
teach you to speak more fluently by using a slow rate of speech,
decreasing length/complexity of the message, reinforcing
fluency and carrying over fluency skills to other situations.
These 2 therapy approaches can
also be
combined and used
at
different
stages of therapy depending on what will be best for the person who
stutters.
SLPs also choose different goals or outcomes from stuttering therapy
depending on the level of stuttering they are treating.
The
3 main
goals of treatment are:
- Spontaneous
Fluency – to speak
normally and without thinking about being smooth
- Controlled
Fluency – to speak with
slow rate and rhythm but still sound normal, takes more effort because
you are using strategies
- Acceptable
Stuttering – to openly
stutter without fear or much embarrassment
One of the things that I didn’t know before becoming an SLP is that we
do a lot of counseling.
We took a short class on counseling at
Utah
State University, but I wish we could have taken more because
we do a
lot of it and mostly in stuttering.
SLPs counsel in many ways:
Parents & Siblings:
SLPs counsel
parents on how to change the home environment
and
how to speak to their child to help them stutter less.
We counsel on
home therapy programs when direct therapy isn’t needed yet.
A lot of
progress can be made by working on stuttering indirectly at home. And
as always, the earlier the better!
Teachers: SLPs
help teachers change the classroom to promote fluency and deal with
teasing.
Children and Adults:
We counsel
and help people who stutter deal with their negative feelings and
attitudes.
It can be hard to face bad feelings
about speaking and how you feel about yourself because of stuttering.
SLPS are trained on how to get them out in the open and deal with them
because it can prevent progress and make stuttering worse.
Can You Guess
What This Is?
