Following is the second in a series of interviews that shaped the narrative of my next book: VoiceS Unearthed: The Impact of Early Intervention on Those Who Continue to Stutter.

Abigail, mom to 10-year-old Oliver

Early therapy for Oliver was Lidcombe – a behavioral treatment for children who stutter. Oliver’s therapist recognized early on that “this was not working.” The speech therapist worked with Abigail to connect with the Michael Palin Center for Stammering in London which  engages in parent-child-interaction therapy, a wholistic approach tailored for families with children who stutter.

“The National Health Service (NHS) assured me that Oliver’s speech was completely normal and this was quite often what happened when children started to speak. It got to where he would open his mouth and nothing would come out. It was really distressing. His stammer got a bit better but I knew something was not right. He was the first person in our family to stammer. I was really frightened. I know adults who are completely debilitated by it.

We started seeing an NHS speech therapist. She did Lidcombe. I didn’t know anything about stammering at all. This was completely uncharted territory. You had to correct him and tell him that what he was doing was wrong. I had to record the severity levels of the fluency throughout the day, every day.

We were looking at it 4-6 weeks later and the NHS speech therapist said, ‘this is not working and we’ve evidenced that with paperwork you’ve kept.’ I thought she was discharging him but if anything, he was getting worse. Then she said she was going to connect with the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering (MPC) in London, an organization that specialized in parent-child interaction therapy for families with children who stammer. 

The turning point:

We started trying to implement parent child interaction therapy while Oliver was on their waiting list. Our speech therapist had put forward a lot of information about our son to the NHS and he managed to get fast tracked.

We were filmed interacting with him while in therapy. I had done two sessions of parent child interaction therapy workshops without our son and came back with loads of information. Our original  speech therapist and I worked through it all and then we met with a speech therapist from MPC. We were given lots of strategies and tips. As soon as we started, his stammer began to improve. One day the original speech therapist turned up and asked, ‘have you heard of this book? I’d really like it if you’d read it.’ It was Voice Unearthed.  I couldn’t put it down and I was crying as I was reading it. I couldn’t believe it – there were so many similarities.

There was one line in your book – you turned ‘like an owl’s head’ when your child started talking. That’s just what you do as a parent. I think I made myself quite ill with worry. I would meet with friends who had children the same age and they were worrying about different milestones and all I could think of was ‘I just want him to speak!’ You’re just powerless without a voice. The pain I felt was counter-productive. It’s hard to manage your body language. When my husband got involved through MPC parent- child interaction therapy, he said, ‘can you think about your facial expressions? When our son is saying the same word over and over again, your face looks like it’s in physical pain and we need to get him to relax and not worry about it.’ This is hard to do when inside you’re consumed with worry.

Without a shadow of a doubt his fluency improved once we stopped doing Lidcombe. The impact you’ve had on our life as a whole family and on our son is just amazing. If there’s anything I can do – if it could help one other person with the turmoil and emotional energy you go through when your child struggles with the basic ability to talk. Voice Unearthed was a really changing point. I would easily take a day off work and school to go into this medical center in London. Why couldn’t we take a day off work, pull our son out of school so he’s just the only child with no pressure, no siblings, and do something fun – like go to the zoo or natural history museum?

Our original speech therapist was very open-minded. She could see the weakness in what she was doing and that it was damaging him as opposed to benefiting him. We transitioned to investing our time and energy in just being happy with him – not having tallies and tik charts and documenting our special time. That was the end of it. Sometimes his words are bumpy but that’s just the way he talks.”