Episode 80:

Better to do zoom therapy with a stuttering specialist : it works and here is why.

Hi today I really would like to talk about something very important and that is telehealth and stuttering therapy. I am licensed in many states and I just want to share with you some success stories over the pandemic where we had no choice but to do online and of course there are some kids who cannot do online therapy, but I'm gonna tell you the majority of them can I'm talking about your preschoolers and early school aged children from ages like 3 to 7 especially with parents involvement is so key. The idea is not for them to look at a screen and do a game with me or with anybody else. We' going to share three success stories with you so you can sort of get an idea so one is a five year old who was from actually Pennsylvania. We will call him

Michael so mom and I would talk over Zoom. We would develop a plan each week. He was stuttering. I would say pretty severely He did three games each time he was on for around 20 minutes then I would get on with mom again. I would tell her what to do and with 12 weeks he was stuttering very mildly and we went to maintenance and I gave her games and things to do at home. The next one I'm going to tell you believe it or not was 3 1/2 he was from New York City. I'm gonna call him Aaron Aaron did have a very good attention span and he actually was on Zoom longer than I wanted him on so I I had a plan extra time with mom and again within he was a 14 week. He's not stuttering anymore and this is almost four years later. The third one actually was a very bright five-year-old young little girl from Manhattan she actually did not love being on Zoom. She did very well in school. She had no problems in school. She was stuttering moderately so her and a mom and I did more of a parent coaching model. It is four years later. She's not studying anymore. The reality is whether you're in person or on Zoom if you don't have a stuttering specialist it won't help you unless you just have a child who's going to developmentally stuff stuttering on their own. I think sometimes we have to have a little bit more of an oven open mind about Zoom obviously if you live 510 minutes from me and you wanna come in and I happen to be in the office you can but this allows consistency options, parent involvement, especially for preschoolers in early school age children who stutter while speech pathologists are not alike school speech pathologists many times go through school never meeting one person who stutters and they don't know how to help so it's all speech mythologists are not alike, all children are not alike if you can really as a parent, you know see if your child will do well with that. You will have options in like other states even if if you're in a where you can find a specialist who can really help you so I just encourage you like before because a lot of people are like automatically saying no no no no no and yet I'm thinking to myself there were like three or four years where I worked with hundreds who st studdered, who have language issues even, who had articulation issues, believe it or not who are doing so well now and I believe the reason why is because there was a lot of involvement because there was a lot of consistency you don't cancel as much when you're online. You don't have to worry about weather. It's honestly a more relaxed environment. I think if we can sort of you know sort of get into the way things are nowadays we will be much happier and it'll allow us more freedom because I am so thrilled and glad that I have had the opportunity because I'm licensed in many states, even though I'm in New York. I've had a huge New Jersey Connecticut, Pennsylvania,CA

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