• Hi everyone, this is Lori Melnitsky, your friendly stuttering specialist and person who stutters. Welcome to episode 57 of Stuttering Demystified and Beyond. I am thrilled to have you all here. In today's episode, I'd love to talk to you about the benefits of teletherapy. People ask me about this all the time, whether I think it matters. I am going to talk specifically about people who stutter, people who clutter, people who need help with language. I personally do not see any difference at all. • I am licensed in many states, so I've been doing teletherapy for many years, especially since COVID hit. For those of you who do not know, I see people in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, over teletherapy. And I saw kids as young as two and a half, believe it or not, when we were all shut down, and I see adults. And when it comes to stuttering, I do not see any difference at all. • Now, if you have a child who's very active and won't do well over teletherapy, there is no guarantee the same thing won't happen in person. I agree there are certain kids, younger kids, who do better with interaction, but when it comes to anybody over the age of six, definitely up to adults, teenagers, don't be fearful of it. And I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to give you a few scenarios of people that I've seen. • One actually is a four-and-a-half-year-old girl I saw for five months over teletherapy. She did great. We modified the activities. Her mother worked with her a lot. She was stuttering pretty severely. After five months, she was a lot more verbal. She was communicative and she's not stuttering anymore. • Another four-year-old, she actually was a little bit selectively muted. She actually did better online because she got a little nervous with the one-on-one interaction. Also, her mother worked with her. She's not stuttering anymore. • I've seen adults who have done intensive programs who are stuttering much less. They've done presentations over Zoom, they've gone on interviews over Zoom, and they've gone on college interviews over Zoom. • I'm being honest with you, and I personally myself, used to do a lot of therapy with my therapist on the phone before the internet was so big. I found that very helpful because I needed telephone practice. • So, there are ways, even over Zoom, of getting your family involved, of getting other people involved. Don't be fearful of it. And I tell you this because a stuttering specialty is very rare and sometimes people are choosing in person because they think it's better. But it's more important, especially under the age of seven where it's a very parent run program. So, I'm teaching you how to work with your kids at home; so, that's very important. • And adults, teenagers, you want to go to somebody more experienced who understands stuttering because otherwise, you waste a lot of time and a lot of money on people who don't know what they're doing. And as we've all gone online, the world has gotten very large, and you have more people who are giving advice that's not too accurate. • So, I'm going to make this episode kind of short and sweet and just realize that it's better to go to somebody experienced and to work over Zoom. There's so many platforms we can interact with. There are words, there are sentences, there are fun games. If you are older, there's so much we can do over Zoom. Don't be afraid. It's better to go to somebody who has experience. • I mean, sometimes we have to remove our thoughts that during COVID, you know, so and so did not like Zoom. But remember, when we were shut down, everybody was spending like hours online. You're talking about speech therapy, stuttering therapy; that's done like once or twice each week. I've been doing this for 30 years, except for certain circumstances, it's much easier, especially for your middle schoolers, your teens, your college students and adults to just go online. www.allislandspeech.com
