This is our first monthly client spotlight. Each month in these posts, we will feature clients who are shining in speech therapy (and elsewhere) and have something valuable to share with the world. This month, we’re featuring an amazing client who is wise and intuitive beyond his years.
RC, age 9, has been receiving speech therapy with us for over a year to address his stutter. After a year of therapy, he is excited about talking, no longer feels tension in his jaw, and is speaking much more fluently than he was a year ago! Most importantly, his attitude about his speech has transformed over the last year. He even created a presentation to educate his parents and siblings on stuttering! Read on to see what he has to say about speech, stuttering, and more.
What would you say is your favorite part about speech therapy so far?
My favorite part is that we have conversations, it’s not like a class with studying and stuff, but a class where you can be yourself and just talk.
So, you and I have been doing speech completely via telehealth, as in online. Doing speech online is kind of a new thing, how do you feel about that?
For me, I advanced a lot doing speech online. If I didn’t do it online, I probably wouldn’t have been able to show you things I have been working on, like my Photoshop projects, and other things I am interested in, which gives us lots of stuff to talk about. So, I think doing speech online or in-person is basically the same thing. It’s actually amazing!
How do you feel like speech therapy has helped you with your stutter?
It has made me feel more comfortable, given me strategies that if I get stuck I can use, and I can also use strategies to help me stutter less. Also, I’m not so scared to stutter. Before speech therapy, I was always scared of stuttering in front of other people, but now I feel like it doesn’t matter.
One of my favorite RC quotes is how compared stuttering to surfing, can you tell our readers about that:
I knew you were going to say the surfing one! Yeah, sure! So, when you go surfing, you are scared to fall in the water because you feel like it will hurt. But when you do, you realize it doesn’t really hurt. So, same thing with stuttering. When you just think about stuttering, you’re scared. But when you do stutter, you realize no one laughed at me, no one reacted, so who cares?! And like when you are surfing and you constantly think about falling in the water, you’re so scared of it, that you will fall! Also, same thing with stuttering, when you constantly think, “oh no, I will stutter”, guess what, you probably will stutter. So try not to be so scared of stuttering.
So, one of the things you and I worked on was creating a presentation about stuttering. Then, you actually presented it and educated your family on what stuttering is, why it happens, etc. How did you feel about doing a presentation for your family?
I was proud of myself.
Besides me, your SLP, what made you want to do a presentation?
I like sharing information that people don’t know.
That’s so awesome! Last thing, what’s your message for kids or families of kids who are working on their speech and language?
Don’t be scared to go to speech therapy, it’s actually better taking like an English class or something because it’s fun and you get to talk!
Thank you to RC for sharing his thoughts and wisdom with everyone!
Adventures in Communication 