Question from SLP Graduate Student
Hello! May name is Marla Garcia and I am currently a graduate student and future SLP! What is one mistake you commonly see beginning clinicians or graduate students make when working with people who stutter, and what would you recommend they do differently? Are there any approaches, comments, or behaviors that may seem helpful from a clinician’s perspective but can actually make a person who stutters feel more self-conscious or pressured about their speech?
Hi Marcia,
Thank you for this thoughtful question. In general, I feel that our most essential clinical tool/skill is curiosity and the ability to listen without judgment. (So on the other side, a misstep clinicians can make is going in with too much of our own agenda and not making room for the client, even a young child, to share and explore their communication experience.) Clients/students are coming to us because there is something about communication that feels hard or inaccessible to them; by establishing this trust and therapeutic alliance, we create a platform from which they can take the gradual small risks over time that add up to change. It is helpful to say “it is okay to stutter,” but equally important to demonstrate this through our practice of deep listening.
-Carrie
Hi Marcia,
I agree with Carrie. For me the most important thing is to listen and find goals and solutions together. In my eyes it can be a mistake to work so much on fluency that a child learns that stuttering is something that is not supposed to be.
I never promise that someone will be fluent or more fluent. That is a shock when they hear it, but as soon as I explain that I can promise that they can say what they want to say and how they want to say it after therapy, everybody smiles.
Manon