CogSciWiki

• The same evaluation principles can be employed for both children and adults
• Children's speech will be recorded during free play with their parents
• Formal tests are then done

• Decrease the likelihood that stuttering will intensify and carry into adulthood
• Most effective for beginning stutterers who do not exhibit associated behaviors or speech avoidance

-Parents are extremely involved in treatment. They are responsible for learning from therapists to further help their child. Caring for a stuttering child to help him/her improve is an around-the-clock job.

1. Monitor speech to keep track of improvements, and to determine if strategies need to be changed

• Systematic monitoring is necessary at home and in the clinical setting
• Calculations of total disfluencies and words/syllable stutters must be calculated to determine if improvement is being made

2. Modify situations that influence stuttering

• Parents should keep a log describing all daily situations when the child's stuttering seemed to either increase or decrease
• Each situation should addressed, one at a time, to eliminate the factors that make children stutter and make the child more comfortable

3. Modify communication between parent and child

• A naturalistic interaction between parents and child is recorded, and the parents must watch the interactions with a clinician to evaluate their own communication habits.
• Parents must set out to change the communication habits that they dislike, one at a time.
• This technique is meant to help parents speak to their children in a slow, relaxed, and understanding manner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2_mgt87g1Y

This video was produced by The Stuttering Foundation, and describes the issue of a stuttering child from a parental perspective.