Stuttering

Stuttering is a condition in which a person experiences involuntary interruptions in their speech that could take the form of repetitions (e.g., spee-spee-speech or b-b-bubbles), prolongations (e.g., ssssspeech), or inaudible blocks that temporarily prevent them from forming the next sound. People who covertly stutter may have developed ways to “trick” their listeners into thinking they don’t stutter, but they still experience the underlying tension of stuttering and may spend much of their day avoiding situations where stuttering could occur.

Developmental stuttering happens to about 5% of all children, usually beginning between 2 and 5 years. It persists in about 1% of the population, meaning 20% of children who begin to stutter will continue to stutter throughout their lives and 80% will not.

For school-age children, teens and adults, my therapy approach is primarily focused on the thoughts and feelings of the person who stutters. Children learn very early that society prizes fluent speech, so they often develop coping mechanisms to hide their stutter such as using filler words (e.g., “um”), substituting words they don’t expect to stutter on, averting their eyes, or avoiding communication situations altogether. Parents, other family members, or even speech therapists can inadvertently reinforce these patterns by praising fluent speech, teaching fluency strategies without a critical lens, or giving advice that often doesn’t work (e.g., “Just slow down and take a breath”). Instead, I work with the client and their community to accept their stutter and validate all the feelings that it can engender – often these include frustration, guilt and shame. We learn why stuttering happens and talk about it openly, reducing its power and our fear. I work to connect children and adults alike with the stuttering community, a powerful resource to combat the isolation many people who stutter feel.

For preschoolers, my approach is not too different. Although I spend more time coaching parents on how they can shift their interactions with their children, the outcomes I’m reaching for are the same: understanding, accepting, and desensitizing ourselves to the stutter for all parties. For some preschoolers, the reduction in fear we achieve leads to less resistance to, and eventual dissolution of, the stutter itself. For all, if I do my job right, they develop a sense of confidence in their communication whether they continue to stutter or not, and the parents feel capable of supporting their children’s ups and downs.

See theResources pagefor more information about stuttering.

Cluttering

Cluttering is a condition in which a person’s speech can be fast, disorganized, jerky, or generally unclear. Often, people may skip over whole words, parts of words, or jumble their sounds within longer words. They may pause in atypical places or emphasize unexpected syllables. It can be difficult to diagnose because there are many ways people can demonstrate cluttering, but also because people who clutter tend to be less aware of their speech differences, only knowing that others say they “talk too fast” or “don’t make sense.”

The foundation for cluttering therapy is building awareness of communication breakdowns, both broadly and for the client specifically. Children and adults alike can feel frustrated when listeners frequently ask them to repeat themselves, for example, but may not know why this happens or what to do about it. We develop functional repair strategies tailored to the client that range from intentionally paying attention to the listener’s facial expressions to slowing speech rate, changing the way we organize our messages, or enunciating so that every syllable of every word can be heard. Like many speech differences, there is no magic pill to “cure” cluttering, but there are ways to successfully manage it and make communication easier and more enjoyable for both the speaker and the listener.

See theResources pagefor more information about cluttering.