Cognitive Approaches Change Lives

Boston Workshop Deemed Success

Since 1985, the Stuttering Foundation has conducted intensive summer workshops in order to increase the pool of speech-language pathologists trained in the latest techniques for the treatment of stuttering. This summer was no exception.

The five-day Eastern Workshop, Cognitive Approaches to Parent Child Interaction Therapy, was held in Boston from June 14-18. Co-sponsored by the Stuttering Foundation of America and Boston University, the workshop was attended by clinicians from ten states, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Poland.

“Those who are selected to participate already have professional experience and are highly motivated and have a significant interest in stuttering,” added Diane Parris, M.S., of Boston University, coordinator of the Workshop.

Frances Cook and Willie Botterill began the program with a “brief taster” of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Solution Focused Brief Therapy for the first two days. The following three days of the workshop were spent exploring Parent Child Interaction Therapy.

Frances and Willie highlighted the role of the clinician as facilitator rather than director of the therapy process.

“My students are enjoying the new information I learned during the workshop,” said one attendee. “We did two hours on cognitive therapy and used some of the activities that the workshop instructors did with us. I’m impressed at how these have facilitated my students’ learning.”

Another said, “This is a significant paradigm shift - one that I will work at gradually incorporating into practice.”

“I grew both professionally and personally from this experience,” added a workshopper.

-From the Fall 2010 Newsletter

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Winston Churchill

Seeking to "remove Winston Churchill's stutter by second guessing the diagnosis" indicates neither a truthful retelling of history nor an informed opinion about a complex speech disorder, say experts in the field of speech-language pathology.

Recent news reports that quote Dr. John Mather, a Washington physician, as saying that Churchill's stutter "is a lie" brought adamant critical response from specialists in the field of stuttering and fluency disorders.

Carly Simon

Carly Simon began stuttering severely when she was eight years old.

Frank Wolf

This Virginian congressman has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981. The longtime supporter of the Stuttering Foundation drew national attention to childhood stuttering in 2006 when he submitted an article about Tiger Woods from the SFA newsletter to the Congressional Record. The congressman is featured in the Stuttering Foundation's Famous People Who Stutter brochure.

Bob Love

Bob Love has dreamt about being a great public speaker since his early days in Bastrop Louisiana, even though, as a young man, he could barely put two words together, let alone speak a full sentence.

In spite of his severe stuttering disability, Bob Love, the son of a sharecropper, rose to become a Chicago Bulls NBA superstar, whose records were eventually surpassed by Michael Jordan. Throughout his entire athletic career, Bob Love kept his stuttering a secret from the fans who adored him, thinking he could do his “talking” on the basketball court.

Bill Walton

From BillWalton.com

Thank you for your interest in my life long problem with my speech and communication skills. I was a very shy and reserved young man who could not speak at all without severely stuttering until I was 28 years old. Always a success in the classroom and on the basketball court, I took refuge in the things that I did well as a youngster. A straight A student, my athletic abilities covered the deficiencies that limited my overall growth and development. The game of basketball was my religion, the gym my church. It was a convenient way of avoiding my responsibilities of developing my human relation skills.

When I was 28, a chance encounter at a social event with Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Glickman completely changed my life in so many ways that things have never been the same since, nor have they ever been better. That day, in a very brief, private conversation (one way, mind you, since I literally could not speak at the time) Marty explained, patiently and concisely, that talking, communicating was a skill not a gift or a birthright and that like any skill, whether it be sports, music, business or whatever, needed to be developed over a lifetime of hard work, discipline, organization and practice. Marty gave me some simple tips that day and then encouraged me to take those keys and apply them to methods of learning that I had received from the special teachers that I had come across in my life, particularly the 6 Hall of Fame basketball coaches that I had played for throughout my career. The beginning of my whole new life was as simple as that. No gimmicks, tricks or shortcuts. Just the realization that with some help, guidance and a lot of hard work that I too could do what seemed so easy, simple and natural to everyone else, yet seemed impossibly out of my reach and comprehension.