VIDEO: Practical Tips to Keep in Mind for Pre-schoolers who Stutter
Click the video above to check it out!
some tips and strategies for working with your pre-schooler who stutters:
1. Understand the whole child
What are their language skills?
Are they having trouble with language?
Do they have trouble understanding language?
Maybe they understand language very well, but they have trouble expressing themselves. You want to understand everything about their language.
2. Look at their temperament
Some kids are really rough and tough, ‘rock’em sock’em’. They just keep ticking, no matter what happens.
Some kids are really sensitive. They're sensitive themselves and they tend to be very sensitive towards others.
I'd work differently with a four-year-old with an easy going temperament versus one with a tougher temperament.
3. Provide CUSTOM therapy
Our goal, whatever approach we’re going to be employing is that we don't throw any approach or anything too rigid on anybody. We try to:
tailor fit the right therapy
borrow from the best research and popular approaches out there
But none of them are a cure-all for every child. So, it's a real decision-making process, engaging the parents, putting the parents in the driver's seat, and making sure that we're working with the child.
4. Treat them like people
we need to make sure that the communication that we encourage between parents and children is naturalistic, not artificial and plastic.
In doing so, hopefully we can help them with the physical side of stuttering, and also help them with the communication values to keep talking and have the confidence they were born with!
Uri Schneider, Co-Director Schneider Speech