Update on Pete

In the last few weeks, Pete's stuttering has gotten way worse. It was such a marked shift that his teacher and his speech therapist both pulled me aside on the same day that I was planning to pull aside each of them. No one can think of any reason why he would have had such a dramatic increase in problems, but this is certainly the worst it's ever been. He can barely get through a sentence, and his chin-jutting (and accompanying head-bobbling) has increased too. I have never heard him struggle so hard to get his words out, and he has mentioned several times in the last month that he wishes he didn't stutter—which he previously had rarely even acknowledged. It's gotten to the point that sometimes he gives up mid-sentence and says "Never mind!" which just breaks my heart.

His speech therapist at school has limited experience with stuttering (it's much rarer than you'd think, affecting only 1% of people); she is meeting with him twice a week instead of just once, but she also suggested he have a follow-up consultation with the speech therapist we used for the last two summers. He came last Friday and concurred with her; he also said that he'd pretty much exhausted his store of knowledge on treating stutterers. They both recommended we contact the local "guru" of stuttering. She called me today and we had a long chat. She sounds just wonderful, and we have an appointment with her in a couple of weeks.

She said one very interesting thing in particular. I told her that Pete is for the most part a very easy-going and cheerful kid, but that lately he's been complaining about his frustration with the stuttering—a first for him. She said that could be a good thing, because maybe he hasn't really seen the need to work much at the strategies he's learned from speech therapy. If everything is pretty good regardless, why should he do the hard work? So maybe if he is finally recognizing that this could be a problem, he'll concentrate on what he's learning in therapy and start trying to implement these tools "in real life" instead of just during his sessions.

Comments

[Elena]

Poor little guy. Maybe this is the start of him really wanting to focus on dealing with the stutter. It seems to me, from my experience, that boys start to go through so much "stuff" around that age. I have no doubt that you will all get through it!

[Bud]

Going to a speech therapist who is trained to treat stuttering sure would be helpful. Have you checked www.stutteringhelp.org to see if they list any near you? Click on "referrals" to find out. They also have some wonderful materials for speech therapists to help them learn how to help stutterers, so you might share their web site with the therapist Pete is seeing. They have workshops to train SLPs, too. You might even want to read their newsletter to learn about the recent research on stuttering. I asked to be put on their mailing list so I can read their newsletter without having to stay at the computer. I love the kids page. This online book for children who stutter might be useful to you, too http://www.stutteringhelp.org/Default.aspx?tabid=210

[Karen]

Yes, thanks -- the speech therapist we're seeing in 2 weeks does indeed specialize in helping stutterers.

The speech therapist at the school is very familiar with the resources available -- and has passed along many useful web sites and such -- but she just doesn't have as much experience with stuttering as with other language difficulties.

I've got a whole bunch of web sites bookmarked!