Stuttering in Conjunction with Speech and Language Delays
Hello, my name is Lorraine, I am currently working towards earning my masters degree in Speech and Hearing Sciences. I really enjoyed looking through the presentations and papers in this conference and it was great learning about people’s personal experiences with stuttering. I was wondering if you had any advice for working with a child with extensive speech and language delays in addition to a stutter? I know some experts have a hard stand that you should only focus on fluency rather then articulation in therapy while others have more of a flexible rule on this. Keeping in mind that every case is different, is there any recent research on working with kids with a phonological disorder and a stutter and how to decide what to treat first?
Hi Lorraine, as you may know, there is not just one way to treat a child who has a concomitant disorder. Some good advice by Ken Logan and Lisa LaSalle are to first look at what disorder is most limiting to the child, and it may be wise to work with that disorder first. You may want to work on one deficit for some amount of time and then the other. Or you can work on both at the same time, but perhaps the phonological disorder might be approached with modeling rather than requiring the child to produce sounds accurately. The Logan and LaSalle article was published in 2003. Healey, Reid, and Donaher also wrote a chapter about working with children with concomitant disorders; I recommend both readings to give you an idea of where to begin.
Best,
Jean