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

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.

Emily Blunt

Actress Emily Blunt struggled with stuttering early in her life. A teacher encouraged her to act in a school play at age 12 despite her stuttering.

Blunt’s name is prominently featured on the Stuttering Foundation's list of Famous People Who Stutter.

Lewis Carroll

The recent Disney version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, garnered a great deal of media hype. Even though the mainstream media has not made mention that Carroll was a person who stuttered, his family history gives credence to the discovery of the genetic link to stuttering. Carroll was born to parents who were first cousins; almost all of their eleven children, three girls and seven boys, struggled with stuttering past childhood.

King George

In November 2010, worldwide movie audiences were presented with a most interesting and unusual movie release with The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth as King George VI and Helena Bonham Carter as his wife Elizabeth.

Unfortunately, history may have forgotten the courageous and inspiring story of Prince Albert who stuttered badly and never dreamed that he would ever be king when his older brother, King Edward VIII, abruptly abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee.

Carly Simon

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