Here is one kid I found on STUTT-L:
We did not have a strongly positive experience with the Lidcombe, but did try it for several months with my little boy, Steven, who had just turned 4 (he's now 4 1/2). Our little boy seemed to do well with it for about the first 6 weeks, but then after that began prolongations, blocking, and ingressive breathing. I knew those were not good signs, but did not get any assistance from Steven's clinician when I requested 'tools' to help him with these struggles. I have come away thinking Lidcombe is possibly helpful for children with mild stuttering.
Anyway, our clinician calculated the %'s and we did one rating for a full 24 hours. We just averaged his score---meaning we considered the best and then also the worst scores for the 24 hours.
We have many mixed feelings about Lidcombe (as I think many other parents and clinicians do, too). We are now pursuing a more traditional approach--would be happy to talk with you more about it if you would like.
7 comments:
"I'd already been looking into other varieties of speech therapy. I'd heard some good things, and some bad, about the Lidcombe Program for preschoolers who stutter. Through a worldwide support group for parents of children who stutter, I fortuitously met a local mom whose daughter went through the Lidcombe Program and now stutters very little. Her therapist is here, in Menlo Park. I talked to her last week and we went for our first Lidcombe appointment today.
I liked the therapist, Mercedes, but the appointment wasn't exactly encouraging. She talked to us about the Lidcombe program and what we would need to do to make it work. We already knew this program included a lot of parental involvement, so it was mostly old news. Smunch played with Play Doh quietly while we talked about him. Then she interacted with him for a little while and went back to talking to us.
The most alarming part of the meeting was how her suggested approach changed after talking to Smunch. There was a significant feeling of "holy crap, this is BAD" hanging in the air. She started talking about how some of his coping strategies would make for clinical challenges. She asked us to rate the stuttering on a scale of 1 to 10. We agreed that, for him, it was a 7 or 8. "Really?" she said. "I would have said 9 or even 10." This is a woman who stutters (although I couldn't tell) and comes from a long line of stutterers herself.
We're to start his therapy by getting him to repeat one syllable words without stuttering. For a kid who loves to talk and speaks in long, complex sentences, this is going to be torture. Of course, trying to interpret his long sentences is also torture right now. There is no win here.
I got home and called his previous therapist's office to cancel our appointments from here on out. Instead of feeling relieved to have a new avenue to pursue, I felt sad. It's so hard to find good people who take a real interest in your child. When you do, they sort of become an extension of your family...the team working to help your child have a normal childhood. It was like breaking up with a boyfriend I still cared about just because I knew the relationship wasn't going anywhere. Awful.
Although many of our friends have said that Smuch's speech doesn't sound bad, we knew it was a big problem. We'd already had speech therapists confirm that suspicion, but there's nothing nice about having it confirmed again and again. And it's hard to think back to the time, just a little over a year ago, when this wasn't even a problem. It's like a monster came and latched onto our little boy and won't let him go. "
From http://ryderwrong.blogspot.com/search/label/speech%20therapy
Well you see, I don't think that is always the case, I have done the Lidcombe program with two of my boys. Lidcombe uses the parent to do the therapy with weekly help and guidance from a therapist. Lidcombe worked for one, and not the other. However, I'm not working with a therapist for the other child, and again, I'm the main therapist for him, with regular consultation with her, and it's been very successful.
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-214206.html
http://www2.everybody.co.nz/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1949322/1
“Thomas not only stutters but is delayed in his general speech development so a bit trickier.
HC - Thomas did the Lidcombe with his SLT for about 6 months last year. The SLT says it works for about 60% of kids...typically T has 'failed' the Lidcombe and is moving on to a Time Out approach - don't talk for count of 5 once dysfluency starts and then start again. Interestingly (he's only had 1 session of this) the pause seems to be producing longer sentences than his usual - adding to my theory it's more of a word retrieval and processing issue. So I guess different 'causes' of the stuttering have different ways of tackling it.
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Eleanor, Mummy to -
William, Nicholas and Thomas”
“C failed with Lidcombe too Eleanor, badly. Stopped talking all together. It worked for J though and the stats still make it the best approach to use as first try.
C had really good success with a program that a British therapist at Start used, but then she went back to Britain
I wouldn't mind a PM conversation about the other though, as C is going through a bad patch again and has asked me to get therapy for him, so I'm bracing myself for more talking to therapists that know less than me on this one particular issue.
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Sandra, The new fashionista; homeschooling, vegetable growing, baker of bread and wanna be locavorian.
Mum of DS's J 16yrs, C 11yrs, DD M 7yrs “
Here are some research results which provide some data on the fact that the Lidcombe programme is not 100% effective in "curing" stuttering.
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/1442/3.RESULTS.pdf?sequence=2
D. Lillian - Thesis
“it is apparent that most pre-treatment %SS scores were substantially higher than 4% and virtually all post-treatment scores were at or below 1% except for participant 9 who presented with an extremely high %SS pre-treatment i.e. 30% and compared to the 30% obtained a low %SS post-treatment i.e. 4%.”
“These gains were retained for all children post-treatment except for participants 1, 2, 6 and 8 with participant 8’s %SS increasing by only 0.5%SS. However, even though treatment appeared to be less effective for participants 1, 2 and 6, the %SS still remained lower than pre-treatment scores.”
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/17679999/Long-Term-Treatment-Outcome-Lidcombe-Program-for-Preschool-
Conference presentation.
“Eleven of the 15 children reached a zero level of stuttering: the other four were below 4%SS and were Mild or Very Mild on the SSI-3.”
You're going to have a biased sample. If you want to determine the effectiveness rate, you'd need to ask for parents of children who've been treated with Lidcombe Program - regardless of their outcome. THEN see how many are still stuttering.
At the moment your methodology is like saying you want to hear from people who've had a recurrence of cancer, after a course of chemotherapy, and concluding that chemotherapy is an ineffective treatment.
Hi Tom,
Please disregard my previous post. I had thought no one else had responded to your post.
Thanks,
Angela
Hi, my son has been on the Lidcombe therapy for 3 months seeing a SLP almost every week in that time. We saw a big improvement for the first few weeks but after that his stutter pattern has returned to how it was before, some days really bad and then a gradual decrease to hardly any problems and then over the next week it becomes worse again. It seems now the therapist is at a loss at to what to do and seems convinced something is happening at home to make it keep getting worse and then better which is insulting. She has blamed my husband because hes in the army and works away alot, then it was my eldest son because he left for uni, nursery, and now she seems to be pointing the finger at me, saying he has to much of an attachment to me (surely if this was the case I wouldnt be able to leave him at nursery). Im so frustrated with the whole experience and feel were no further towards helping him that we were before we started the course. I hope other people have a better and more productive experince from this course. I feel it is more suited for children with less severe stutters xx
Both my children completed the Lidcombe program and they both had different reactions and outcomes. My son thrived during Lidcombe. He went from extreme dysfluency to no dysfluency by the time we finished. He incorporated the techniques taught and did very well for a few years. However, 3 years later he started stuttering again. It's been a gradual progression to moderate stuttering and we're now seeking speech therapy again (he's 9 now). It breaks my heart to see them struggle and I was so hopeful that the program would have longer term effects. We also did the maintenance program for 2.5 years.
My daughter on the other hand didn't cooperate with the Lidcombe program at all. We tried different techniques over a period of 2 years. We finally decided to give her a long break and during that time she stopped. I notice that she often takes a "tummy breath" before speaking and is very cautious about speaking slowly and clearly.
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