Stuttering Research Paper

November 30, 2010
Research Paper
Familial Support and Treatment for Stuttering Children
Stuttering is a speech disorder where the fluency of speech is disrupted by repetition, pauses or prolongations of words. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (2010), stuttering affects individuals of all ages but occurs most frequently in young children between the ages of 2 and 6 who are developing language. This is a common stage in young children’s lives often referred to as normal dysfluency or psuedostuttering. Some children will have spontaneous recovery from stuttering, in which they recover without treatment, and some children will greatly need treatment intervention. Because there is no way to detect children who will recover without assistance and those who will not, the appropriate
timing to seek intervention in hopes of a natural recovery has been debated. Nonetheless, it is important that treatment be provided in order to help the children without the ability to recover naturally to overcome or cope with such speech disorders as stuttering. Since a child is more likely to spend more time at home, it is beneficial for the child to receive a great amount of support from his or her family during the intervention. One early intervention program for children who stutter that requires a great deal of parental involvement is the Lidcombe Program.
The Lidcombe Program is a parent-administered, operant treatment for early stuttering. According to (Ratner & Healey, 1999), “The program rests on the premise that stuttering is a speech problem and that children who stutter must learn to manage their faulty speech production system in all life situations” (p.192). In relevance of time and age of intervention, the Lidcombe program suggests that, whereas a median of 10.5 clinic visits is sufficient for medium- and long-term control of stuttering in preschool-age children, slightly more visits are needed to

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achieve the same results with school-age children (Harrison, Jones, Onslow, & Packman, 2000). It is safe to imply from this statement that the earlier a child receives intervention the easier it will be to tackle his or her fluency disorder. The Lidcombe Program is accomplished in two stages.
Stage 1 is conducted when the child’s stuttering is at its peak. During stage 1, the Lidcombe program teaches parents to give direct, effective feedback to his or her child’s speech and teaches them how to measure their child’s stuttering each day on a 1-10 scale; 1 being the least amount of stuttering. The parents’ feedback is significantly positive and limited to an extent. The parent comments mainly when the child speaks without stuttering and only occasionally when the child stutters. The parent does not comment on the child's speech all the time. Instead, they choose specific times during the day in which to give the child feedback. For the duration of stage 1, the child and the parent visit the clinic once a week but the parent conducts the treatment every day. Stage 1 ends and Stage two begins when stuttering disappears or is very low. Stage 2 is conducted to maintain the progress made in step 1 and is intended to keep stuttering away for up to one year. During stage 2, the parent and child’s visit to the speech clinic is condensed (Australian Stuttering Research Centre,
2009). A study conducted by (Harris, V., Onslow, M., Packman, A., Harrison, E., & Menzies, R., 2002), aimed to research the short-term effects of the Lidcombe Program. The results of the research showed that the improvement in stuttering in a group of pre-school-age children after a set number of clinic visits in the Lidcombe Program was greater than the effect of natural recovery. This indicates that the Lidcombe Program has an immediate impact in helping children to overcome their speech difficulty. In summation, stuttering is a speech fluency disorder that can be corrected with the proper treatment, or, in some cases, with no treatment at all. Along with treatment, it is important that parents are actively involved in the treatment for children who do not recover naturally because they spend more time in the home than in the clinic. The Lidecombe Program is a

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treatment that is supervised by the clinician but conducted by the parents. With the Lidcombe Program, parents are taught by the clinician to effectively correct their child’s speech dysfluency and give direct feedback while the child improves his or her speech. According to research, the program really does work. In fact, one study on the short-term effects of the Lidcombe program implies that the program is actually more effective than natural recovery.