Question for a PWS
Hi my name is Erynn Richards, I am a speech-language pathology graduate student. I am currently working as an assistant in an elementary school and have a couple of kiddos on my caseload who stutter. One of them is a second grader who is not aware of his stutter but his parents want us to work on it during therapy due to his low intelligibility. He doesn’t understand why this is being targeted because he doesn’t see the problem. As a PWS, how should I go about explaining this to him without making it seem like there is something wrong with the way he speaks? As of right now, he speaks freely and I don’t want him to feel like he can’t do that.
Hi Erynn! Wow, I really don’t have a good answer for this. From SLPs who voluneer in our association, I know that parents sometimes need more work than the children. Truely – I think that your instincts are right, it sounds like the kid is rockin’ it, and working on his speech might make him feel he needs to be fixed. Maybe it could be done in a way of teaching him some techniques in case he feels blocked or struggles, like proposing tools he can choose to use if he wants. Personally I’m all for “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it”.
But it sounds like there’s a need for alignment of expectations with the parents.
Hi Erynn, thank you for your question.
It is quite difficult for me to think of a person who stutters who is not aware of his stuttering.
Personally, I am a covert stutterer. I can hide my stuttering and from the outside many people might think I am fluent. But this does not mean that I do not experience stuttering: I sense the block coming, use strategies to avoid it, and feel shame if these do not work.
And it has always been like that, even when I was a child. But I denied for almost 30 years that I had a stutter. It was the elephant in the room. I was trying not to look at the elephant, to deny its existence. And this attitude created huge problems for me in life.
So, I don’t know this child and I don’t want to project my story. But again, it is very difficult for me to imagine a stutterer who is not aware of his own stuttering. While I can imagine a stutterer who denies his stuttering.
Hope this helps!
Andrea