Virtual Learning

Virtual Learning by The Stuttering Foundation is an online series of free, interactive workshops with a variety of offerings for speech-language pathologists, parents, and individuals who stutter.

The series includes monthly offerings ranging from clinical training opportunities, to parent education, to a platform for people who stutter of all ages to share their stories. Sessions are moderated by many of the world’s leading clinicians, researchers, and self-help advocates — bringing learning and collaboration to you.

Beyond the Child: Exploring Parental Temperament in Stuttering Intervention

Speaker: Katerina Ntourou, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Case Western Reserve University

Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Time: 12 pm-1:15 pm Eastern Time

Click to Register

Description: As primary caregivers, parents are often the most significant environmental influence in their child’s life, shaping development across a wide range of domains (e.g., self-regulation, socioemotional functioning) and supporting intervention outcomes. Parental temperament, in particular, has been shown to play an important role in various child-focused interventions (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy), with traits such as emotional warmth, negative affect, and stress regulation influencing both treatment adherence and child outcomes. Although research on parental temperament in the context of stuttering is limited, it is important to explore how it may shape children’s socioemotional development, their reactions to stuttering, and potentially, their response to intervention. This presentation will focus on the role of parental temperament in stuttering clinical practice.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will:

Describe the different dimensions of temperament.
Provide examples of methods for assessing temperament in adults.
Summarize ways stuttering therapy can be tailored to the parents’ needs by taking their temperament into account.
Explain how parents’ temperament could influence children’s socioemotional development.
Explain how parents’ temperament could influence stuttering intervention.

Details:

Target Audience: Speech-Language Pathologists, Graduate Students, Parents of children who stutter
There is no fee for this event.
*This course is not eligible for CEUs at this time
Please register if available for the live event only. A recording may be available at a later date on our streaming site for a small fee.

Katerina Ntourou, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research interests include the role of temperament in stuttering and the protective and risk factors underlying the development of anxiety in stuttering.

CELEBRITY FOCUS

Mel Tillis

Mel Tillis, born Lonnie Melvin Tillis, was an influential figure in country music, both as a songwriter and a performer. His journey to fame was marked by overcoming personal challenges, including a stutter that he turned into a defining part of his public persona.

John Stossel

John Stossel is one of the most recognized and articulate reporters today. However, he once considered giving up his broadcasting career because of his stuttering.

“Fear of stuttering can easily become worse than the stuttering itself,” observed Stossel. “The idea that I’m on television and making speeches is still a shock to me sometimes.”

Bill Withers

While Bill Withers has long been on the Stuttering Foundation's list of Famous People Who Stutter, many people probably didn’t realize he stuttered. He passed away on March 30, 2020.

Born in 1938 in Slab Fork, W.V., Withers was the youngest of six children. When his father died when Withers was small, he was raised by his mother and grandmother, both of whom worked as domestics.

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.

Bruce Willis

While the world knows Bruce Willis as an A-list actor, few know that he struggled with stuttering throughout his first 20 years.

Walter Bruce Willis was born in 1955 in West Germany to his German mother, Marlene, and his American GI father, David Willis. The family settled in David’s hometown of Penns Grove, New Jersey in 1957, and the couple has three other children.