The aim of therapy for stuttering is to reduce a child’s stuttering level to as low as possible. This is structured in play-based therapy, keeping conversations and interactions as natural as possible.
Stuttering therapy may use a combination of any, all or even none of the techniques as described below.
Other techniques involve praising stutter free speech and ensuring you have time to do this each day. This involves playing games targeting reducing the amount your child is saying in order to provide more opportunities to praise their stutter free speech. This form of therapy and feedback needs to be specifically recommended and discussed with you by your Speech Pathologist.
As part of any stuttering therapy it is helpful to keep a record of the severity of their stuttering on a daily basis to see if other factors are contributing and map your child’s stutter over time. This is a scale from 0 – 9, where 0 is equal to no stuttering behaviors and 9 is where the child has stuttered significantly in all words and it has impacted their ability to communicate.
This is then especially helpful when discussing your child’s stuttering behaviors and work out if there are any trends present i.e. “on days when my child is tired their stuttering is much more obvious than when they have had a good sleep”. Each day you will mark with a cross how their stuttering is at the end of the day, and we will record this data from you each therapy session so we can keep accurate data about your child’s level of stuttering outside the clinic environment. A sample of what a data sheet may look like follows below.
The speech pathologist may also take a range of other data during a session including the type of stuttering observed, the percentage of syllables stuttered and numbers of stutters, all of which your speech pathologist can further discuss with you during your intervention sessions.
If you child is struggling with their stuttering behaviors please do not hesitate to get in contact for an assessment and intervention with one of our qualified speech pathologists, were here to help!
