2022 Talk to a Professional
Hi, my name is Kaylee. I am currently a graduate student studying speech pathology. Do you have any advice for a future speech therapist who wants to work with children? What techniques and strategies have you had the most success using to minimize the severity of an individual’s stutter?
Thank you!
Kaylee,
HI! It is so great to hear from you and thanks for asking questions and advocating for your education!
The first thing I have to say is I would encouraging you, and everyone, to practice listening skills as often as you can. Learn about active/mindful listening and incorporate them into your everyday life so you can best know what a client is telling you through words and gestures.
Another skill I would encourage new SLPs to work on when wanting to help kids is practice stepping outside of your comfort zone. The more fun therapy is, and the more functional fun, the more the clients feels it and the beneficial helping them is. These are skills. We have to be comfortable doing things that are uncomfortable. After all, we are asking clients to do a lot of things that are new and uncomfortable, so we need to model that to them.
Further, I would practice producing different disfluencies in order to model disfluencies. As a general rule, we model everything we ask a client to do. We also want to model different disfluencies so clients gain an education about stuttering.
The skill of educating ourselves in order to educate others is an important part of therapy. The more we can pass on to clients, of all ages, the more ownership they can take for their unique voices.
You will notice I don’t use terms like techniques, tools, or strategies. For me, the use of language is important to how we others perceive what we do. Terms like “tools, techniques, and strategies” might imply FIXING something. We don’t fix people, we help people by teaching them SKILLS. The word skill implies practice, learning, and growth.
Does that help? Let me know!
Keep learning!
With compassion and kindness,
Scott