Publication

Co-Author: Stuttering Therapy from School-Age through Adulthood: Clinician and Client Perspectives

I am a person who stutters. During my junior year of college, my speech therapist (from the 6th grade) asked if I would like to Co-Author the presentation he was publishing. In this publication, I discussed the attitude I have adopted towards my stutter and the pathway that brought me to this acceptance. Specifically, I focused on the life-changing realization that my goal is not to speak fluently, my goal is to speak however and whenever I want. Fluency-focused therapy sells and is it usually what people who stutter want to work on. However, assigning fluency as the end goal is setting up people who stutter to inevitably fail. I believe that the purpose of speech therapy should be to devalue fluency and help people accept, and even cherish, their speech as part of who they are. I presented this at the American Speech and Hearing Association National Convention, which hosted approximately 15 thousand Speech-Language Pathologists from universities, schools, and therapy clinics all around the country. Many of those clinicians came to the conference thinking “How can I fix my clients?” and left the conference thinking “How can I show my clients they don’t need to be fixed?”. I am incredibly thankful and blessed to have the opportunity to share this message on such a broad platform.