family and friends

Assessing the impact of childhood intervention for stuttering

What is the impact of childhood intervention on those who continue to stutter into adulthood? Many adults have shared their experiences in memoirs, on podcasts, in blogs, etc. and most of those experiences are stories of recovery – not from stuttering, but from the impact of earlier therapy. Parents can benefit from reading these accounts, … read more…

Acts of resistance: how one speech and language therapist found a new tribe

What happens when we view speech and language therapy for children who stutter as a celebration of difference rather than a process of chasing fluency? Is it possible to throw a party announcing we stutter, loud and proud? About three years ago I sat in a room with six 10 and 11 year old boys … read more…

Stammering in times of Corona

‘Stammering does not exist in a vacuum’ I remember being drawn to this line when editing Christopher Constantino’s chapter of Stammering Pride and Prejudice. It’s the type of sentence I tend to like: it’s short, simple but it also makes you think. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently. I’m not sure about you, … read more…

The Value in Connecting with Other People who Stutter

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to write a guest blog post for Redefining Stammering. I am an assistant professor and researcher at Western Michigan University in the United States. I also work with people who stutter in my day-to-day life as a supervisor for budding speech therapists and as a co-leader for a … read more…

Speech and language therapy and the social model: Out at sea and lost?

In the new book, ‘Stammering Pride and Prejudice: Difference not Defect’ (Campbell et al., 2019) Chris Constantino writes about the need for new narratives in stammering. He holds up the social model as a tool to help people think outside of the box, yet poignantly adds that the real challenge is that people who stutter … read more…

We need to talk about therapy for children who stammer: a new approach

In the previous blog post, ‘We need to talk about therapy for children who stammer’ (March, 2019) we argued against traditional, medical model practices which perceive stammering as un-natural or disordered, and focus on eradicating or diminishing stammering. We argued for a new, consistent approach to support children who stammer in their early years; one … read more…

Reflecting on the power behind language

Working as a speech and language therapist for over 15 years, I had some awareness of the social model of disability, but it’s fair to say that most of my training taught me to view communication differences from a medical model perspective. There isn’t anything too unusual about this as a speech and language therapist. … read more…

In the Face of Jargon

In Patrick Campbell’s previous blog, he talks about the “common language we hear in and around speech and language therapy” and the “language of childhood therapy.” As the parent of a now-23-year-old who stutters, I never questioned what a therapist meant when they talked of “speech therapy.” This is a topic now on my mind … read more…

We need to talk about therapy for children who stammer

cut out kids

Childhood stammering therapy has come under less scrutiny than adult stammering therapy from a social model perspective. In this blog, we want to look at how criticisms of the medical model, and the rise of the social model and neurodiversity, may challenge some clinical practices for childhood stammering therapy.

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