A Joyful, Student-Centered Approach to Stuttering Therapy in K–12 Schools

:

Welcome to the Eslipy Now podcast. I'm really excited to have Dr. Kanra Kozinski with us today. She is a speech language pathologist and stuttering ally who works as a clinical associate professor in communication sciences and disorders at the University of Vermont. She's also the owner of Vermont Stuttering Therapy and the founder of the Normalize Stuttering Challenge. And she's a co-chapter leader of the Vermont chapters of the National Stuttering Association or NSA support groups. And she raises funds for the NSA with two online stores. that was just a small snippet of what all of the things that Dr. Janna Kaczynski is up to. But without further ado, let's just hear from her. Thank you, Marisha. I'll take any excuse to talk about stuttering. So thank you for having me. Yeah. And this is an area that I've been really wanting to learn more about. So I'm really excited and grateful that you're here to share with us today. Thank you. And so I read your bio and shared a little bit of your background. But can you share a little bit of your story and kind of... how you ended up where you are today and what led you down this path? Sure. I had never met a person who stutters until I started working with Barry Gattar at the University of Vermont when I was a student there. His class was a game changer for me because I was really inspired by how many complex unanswered questions there are about stuttering and the- the depth of the counseling skills that are involved with that. And Barry, don't know if you know him or have met him, but he's just the nicest human that ever lived. So if you need a good model of how to connect with people and show, like he's basically walking empathy, is how I describe it. And he's very open about his own stuttering. So I just kind of learned how to try and soak all of that up. And I'm not a person who stutters myself. So I try and do that from the... the non-stuttering angle of that and to be open and not make assumptions, those kinds of things. So after school, I worked for five years in Montreal, and then I came back and did my PhD with Barry, and I have stayed at the University of Vermont since then. So I supervised graduate students working with people who stutter there, but I really missed kind of also doing a lot of the hands-on work myself. And Vermont is a very rural state. And so unless you live up near the university, it's hard to access those services. So I did start a private telepractice to kind of offer services outside, you know, a certain distance from the university. And in the meantime, my niece was born and it turns out that she stutters and we don't have anybody who stutters in our family. So that was really interesting. I was there the day that she started to stutter at Christmas. And to see it from that personal angle after working with people who stutter for so long just brought, you know, just it was a different perspective to have it be in my family. And so then I have done this for about 18 years and I have heard a lot of stories from folks and many of them are uplifting, but a lot of them are very upsetting. So in terms of my drive to kind of take some of these advocacy steps, I've One of the men I worked with said that every time he stuttered as a child, he got punched in the head by his father. And a man that I work with just recently got banned from a coffee shop because of his stuttering. I'm sure that he must have had a lot of secondary behaviors and they thought something else was happening, which is terrible. And I've heard really unfortunate stories of even teachers making fun of kids who stutter here in Vermont. Um, and, uh, I also, and this is a content warning for folks. Um, I have lost two of the folks that I work with or were friends with who stuttered to suicide. And, um, so I am, I get very protective of people who stutter and their voice. And it really charged me up to do more, um, and to step in and to generalize, to normalize stuttering and, you know, not just in our own circles, but globally. And so I'm trying to give a platform to stuttered voices. And so I did create those stores. So I do sell basically stutter advocacy swag. I also sell things for allies, so SLP's and SLPA's and audiologists. But the overarching theme that I try and focus on is to is for just the basic human right to be heard, right? I mean, that's really all the people who stutter want and need is to be heard and to say what they want when they want and to have it be okay that when they say it, it's stuttered. So I definitely take more of an acceptance-based approach to how I run things. Yeah. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. Your heart for all of this just really shines through. It's great to see that. Amazing. I think it's pretty clear, but I guess just to make sure we're all on the same page, what is stuttering awareness? Yeah, love this. Yeah, juicy question. like a juicy one. If it's okay, I want to break it down into some chunks. The way I think of it is the smallest chunk would be personally for that person. And then the wider chunk is the community. And then the biggest would be society and just globally. So on that real personal level, I like to think of it as just starting to be willing and genuinely curious about what's noticing and noticing what's going on with your own stuttering. Like, what is this all about? And as a person who doesn't stutter, I spend most of my time listening very carefully. to their core message and trying not to make any assumptions about what they think about it. So I have to genuinely ask questions. And also with that gauging kind of what they're ready for me to do. Like what is their readiness for this? Cause everybody comes in at a different level and what we're asking them to do is hard. I've had one person describe it as walking naked through a minefield. Like you're asking me to do that? And like, well, You don't have to step into the red zone yet, but what would you consider being okay as a step towards doing that? And so some people are a hard nope, and some people are like, sure, I'm willing to try this thing for now. And then of course that changes over time. But some people don't even realize the kinds of stutters that they have. Like, oh, I didn't know that when I stretch out my words like this, it's called a prolongation. And sometimes I use, you know, Play-Doh to help with kiddos get to understand that, or we can name it something. Like I have some kids call their stutters clones because they're repetitions and they like Star Wars, things like that. And so the more awareness of also like just how we talk, right? You know, and so I'll get kids to lay on the ground and do an outline of their body to do a little speech machine activity to point out, you know, this is how we talk. put little sticky notes where you feel tension when you stutter and you get really interesting unexpected answers. Like sometimes they say, I feel my stuttering in my back or in the back of my brain. And you get to learn a lot more and it allows them to start talking about something that might have hard to talk about. And then just encouraging them to start noticing those things and the, like what kind of eye contact do I make when I talk to people? Am I actually listening to the other person or am I thinking about what I want to say? You that's a common thing that can affect, you know, your connection and regular conversation, just starting to notice it. And how do you feel about those things? And what changes are important to you? And what difference would that make in your life to help them make their own goals? And so I'll ask them what their best hopes are as a person and how stuttering fits into that. I don't know if you've done anything like narrative therapy. That's one strategy that we use. Yeah. I don't know if that's applicable only to stuttering or if it to other areas. But basically, we have them draw and name their stutter, which gives you a real immediate feedback about what their relationship with their stuttering is right away. Like, is this their friend or a foe, basically? So like, I've seen very colorful unicorns with the words coming out of their horn and, you know, the kiddo says, I wanna take my stutter out for s'mores and we're gonna go skateboarding. It's like, okay, cool. And then they've got other kiddos who draw very dark, like bloody with lots of weaponry and they know, they say, I hate him. And that's important to be able to have a way to get that out. And for that kiddo, we ended up drawing a bunch of his stuttering characters, putting them on bottles and shooting them down with ping pong guns and throwing them in the garbage. He wanted to say, I hate you. And that's the stage that they're at. But for some of the kiddos, it's a really positive. I've... I don't know if you've seen that the Stuttering Foundation of America has a really good newsletter where they'll publish anything that a kiddo will draw or say about their stuttering. And we've had like six of them or so go in and the kids are so proud, you know, like, so they're willing to make something that will help other kids too. So I'm just going to keep going because I can talk forever. That's okay until you tell me to stop. No, this is amazing. Keep going. I'm eating that. Okay. and instead of like, you know how they often could use different scales because we want them to kind of be able to participate in this noticing of their stuttering. So instead of like a stuttering severity rating scale, I have them work pretty early in the process of creating like a joyful scale, you know, and having them define what each end of the scale means for them. Because normally the bottom end of the scale if you were doing severity would be no stuttering. But in this case, that end of the scale is joyful stuttering and it includes stuttering, but maybe it's not as effortful. You're talking to who you want to talk to. You're not using a lot of tricks, those kinds of things. So actually it would be on the other end, like if you were totally fluent, but you were just using all kinds of ways to avoid saying what you wanna say, that is not where we're aiming for the kiddos to be. So I also, in that process, they kind of define what is meaningful to them, like what to flip something that might have been negative into a positive. So they might come up even with like a mantra related to joyful talking. And some of the kids that I work with, we actually say those mantras together at the beginning of every session, like, okay, here we go, let's say our mantras. And some of them would be like, I deserve to be heard, I was born that way and that's okay, stuttering is just how I talk, et cetera. And one adult that I work with actually said that he wanted his scale to be what his, he wants to be the person his younger self would be proud of. And so every week when he comes in, I was like, okay, what did you do this week that your younger self would be proud of? So generally with that whole personal sense of self-awareness, stuttering awareness, I want them to start to be aware of everything that's going on for them and to start considering accepting that full identity as a person who stutters instead of like taking on the false role as somebody who does not stutter and learning to let go of it instead of having those strong needs to like control or to to hide. So that was the personal one. Before we move on to the next one, I know that because I think SLPs are always looking for ways of like, okay, I know that, like, because a lot of us are realizing that we should probably be doing like in working through or like, My words are not working today, but like what we learned in grad school in terms of stuttering therapy is a little bit different than what we're learning about today. I think for many of us, I think a lot of SLPs are like, okay, so how do I navigate this? And what does this look like? And you just gave a beautiful, like so many beautiful examples, but I feel like I'm sure that they'll want to know more about the joyful scale. So it sounds like you kind of customize that scale depending on your client or do you have like a resource as with an example of that? I'd be happy to share one after in the show notes too, but literally I can come in with a blank sheet of paper and say, okay, we're going to just find a way. I'm going to check in with you every week about how you feel you're doing. And we, in order to do that, we need to kind of know. how to gauge that. And so you're, I like to give a lot of power to the students to do this, you know, give them a lot of control in general. So yeah, they might not want to call it joyful talking, they might want to use a different word. And I just kind of go with that. And they're going to define what the other side of the scale means. And then I just try and guide them so that gently that the joyful you know, are you okay that the joyful side includes some stuttering? As long as it's easy, you can say what you want and it doesn't interfere with what you want to do or be or say. They're like, oh yeah, that's fine. And you know, so it just, I give some shaping along those lines, but otherwise, you know, the kiddo is going to define it for themselves. And then, yeah, whenever they come in, we use that in their own words when we... talk about their stuttering, once we do a narrative therapy like that naming the stutter, I don't call their stuttering anything else. You know, like, how was Mr. Unicorn today? Did he visit you? When did he come around? How did you, you know, handle that? What did other people do when Mr. Unicorn came around? It's like a nice little way to separate them from talking about it directly for those kids who are a little more shy. and things like that, gives them just a little bit of space. know, like it's not the stuttering is me. It's Mr. Unicorn who comes and he lives in my brain and these are the things he does. And somehow it's easier to then like talk about it and, you know, come up with ways to, you know, cope or adjust or just tolerate, you know, be, just let it be what it is. SLPs are wanting to learn more about narrative therapy. Do you have any favorite resources for that? Well, I can definitely share that, I have some, there's some articles about that. But yeah, it's very similar to how I just described that I get pretty vivid. Like I would take an entire session to do this. And most kiddos, when you all have art supplies and things ready, you know, say, this is weird. you today we're going to talk about something weird, okay? I'm going to ask you to, you you stutter and we've been talking about your stuttering and I would just like to talk to it sometimes, but the trouble is I don't know what it looks like, you know, and only you know what it looks like. So can you help me understand? And they'll kind of look at me like, I don't know what you want me to do, lady. You know, like what is this? I'll say, your stutter have eyes? You know, does it have eyes? And you know, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes people pick a fog and it doesn't have eyeballs. But somehow asking that question, does it have eyes, like leads them to get going. And then you start commenting on, oh, I noticed you picked, you know, yellow and blue crayons here for this color. he's wearing, it looks like he's wearing a cape. What is that cape all about? And it looks like there's stars in the sky. I'm just curious what's happening there. You get them to kind of describe it like vividly, like a movie. And you ask a lot of details about, you know, when does it come around and how does it make you talk differently? And what do you do because you don't stutter all the time. So. You sometimes have them create a second character that is them, that is stronger than the stutterer. And then so what is it that you do? He tries to kick me in the throat and I have this lightsaber that I use to push him away and say, no, I'm going to say it the way that I want to or whatever it is. It's just like a nice. It's very vivid and detailed. And then I always refer to their stuttering by that character name after that. Some of them have created entire comic strips. And, you know, some of those did make it to the Stuttering Foundation newsletter. So, yeah, we try and get as detailed as possible. I love it. I love it as a strategy. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. And then we'll add the... articles that you mentioned in the show notes. think that'll be a great resource. Okay, so just a quick recap. So we're going through the three components of stuttering awareness. So we just chatted about personal and then we have community and society. And for the personal, we talked about like noticing what's going on with our stuttering or the client's stuttering and like the types of stuttering, like the speech machine, where they. where we feel it, incorporating narrative therapy, the Joyful Scale. So that's just a quick recap of some of the things that we went over. So what does the community starting awareness look like? Yeah. So for the individual in the community, I start to have the kiddos talk about, and this is from Vivian Siskin and the avoidance reduction therapy, who I'll talk about a lot because she's my... She and Barry to me are like the people that I would do literally anything they say. But so one activity you can do is called who's in your box. So you have the kiddo identify like who are the people right now that you feel safe and comfortable stuttering openly with. I can have them actually, you know, draw it in a box and put their names and then who are the people just outside the box that you might consider letting in. And then who are the people that are like, wait, nope, not interested in letting them in my box right now. And so part of therapy could be some of their goals, could be creating easy, medium, and hard goals, using that as your framework. So all right, your mom is a person who's in your box. What are you willing to practice with your speech? this week, are you willing to stutter openly with her a few times at breakfast? And you get them to be very specific. Okay, there's a medium person who's just outside the box. Are you willing to talk to them for one five second hello, you know, just to get you a little bit closer to bringing them in your box? And for the outside people, like, or if they have something really high up their hierarchy, they would get like an A plus just for even doing that thing. Like, oh, I never want to give a presentation, but they're willing to do that with their teacher as a starting point. Just because they did it and they were willing to take this risk, that is kind of redefined what their success is. you know, what difference would it make if you were to bring more people into your box or your community? So, I mean, the other people in the community are, of course, their parents and their close family and how they respond to their stuttering. And, you know, there's tons out there with Palin, parent-child interaction and patient listening and low-pressure environment, talking to siblings about interruptions, things like that. But the parents need community, too. So I often will try and connect them with other parents whose child stutters, you know, they have a lot of valid things that they're thinking about. You know, even with a two-year-old, they're like, I don't know if they're going to be able to ask somebody to prom. It's like, okay, this is important to them. They're thinking way into the future. So I ask them their best hopes as well. That's another good cognitive behavioral therapy kind of. discussion where I might even meet with them separately from the child if I see that they're very anxious and I give them a list of or I ask them to say, you know, what's good enough for the outcome of their stuttering? And to kind of rank that from one to 10. If one means it's, you know, not affecting them at all and a 10, like where are you okay? And then Asking them the child's best hopes for their life in general. Oh, I want them to be a good friend and parent and have a job they love, all of those things. And then you can ask them to rate, where are they on their scale to meeting all those best hopes? And if they say, well, he's a four-year-old, so he's like a three, it's like, okay, that's fine, yeah. But what makes him not a zero? and they list all the, he's very clever and creative and independent and funny and smart. And, you know, I have them read that list back. I read it back to them and I say, what does that say about you as a parent? You know, and it's kind of a, and then I asked them again, what is your good enough after that discussion to see if it's changed? And we have seen some dramatic things where they're like, I absolutely want negative five stuttering, don't want it to happen at all. And then after we have this discussion, they realize they've got a great, amazing kid on their hands, it's going to be fine no matter whether they stutter or not. Then they normally adjust that. So that's another really awesome activity for parents that I've found to be successful. And then teachers or other people in the community, of course, I know a lot of SLPs are working in the schools. I encourage my clients to write letters to their teacher and there's a little, you know, there are some templates out there, but mostly it's about to say, you know, these are the kinds of things that I like and this is what my stuttering is like and this is what helps me. And also if they want to talk to them about how presentations might go or. how I choose to kind of raise, I will participate, but please call on me when I raise my hand rather than just like cold calling me. And another member of the community, of course, is teachers. So I work with my kiddos to write a letter to the teacher. So that could say things like, you know, these are the kinds of things that I like. This is what my stuttering sounds like. This is what helps me in the classroom so that you can... so I can participate fully. And then I work with the family to decide, does the kiddo give it to the teacher themselves? Do the parents, are they involved at all? I basically let that be the kiddo's choice, what their comfort is. And then they might have a conversation about, oh, I prefer to raise my hand before you call on me, as opposed to just being cold called, those kinds of things. And so many people may not know. I know a lot of people feel like, They're going through their stuttering alone, but there is a huge, we call it the Stamily. So the stuttering family is enormous and very enthusiastic and supportive. So we have the National Stuttering Association chapter. I've been to the conference like five times. Every time you like vibrate from the energy, I never want it to stop. I totally encourage people to connect with those groups. We allow people to join our group by Zoom. So if anybody doesn't have a chapter and you wanna join our chapter, please just contact me. Friends has great groups that meet. There's lots of camps. I would recommend any way that you can connect anybody to anybody else who stutters because you're definitely not alone. There's this amazing group called Sisters Who Stutter for teens, specifically girls. I love them. Really great advocacy. I highly recommend them. And so, you know, part of this is you're an individual in a community, so you have to also learn to cope with people's responses, which sometimes are going to be rude or not nice. And so part of therapy too is like helping them tolerate that and, you know, get some mantras in your head like, let them think what they think, I can't control how other people react. You know, so we do build in some cognitive messaging around that. I do some predicting and checking the evidence because there's a lot of anticipation anxiety that goes into, they're going to give me the evil eye or I just am guessing that they're going to be rude. We say, okay, yeah, make your prediction and then see what actually happened. If they did give you the stink eye, what else could that have been? It could have been about your speech, but it could be because they ate a weird burrito and they don't feel good. they're late to class or somebody in their family, something happened. And so we just don't wanna always assume it might be about their stuttering. So one activity I do when I leave the clinic with clients is we have this big at University of Vermont, we have this big student center. And so I'll go down to where the people are and I have the person who stutters up on the stairs so they cannot hear me. And I say, okay, you tell me whether I stuttered. just by the reaction of the person that I talk to, right? So they can't hear me, they can't hear if I'm stuttering, they're just looking at the person I'm talking to. And then I'll go up and say, okay, what do you think? Did I stutter or not? They're like, oh, you definitely stuttered because they looked uncomfortable and they ran away from you. And I was like, okay, all right. On that one, I did not stutter. So what else could have been going on? know, oh, they were late for class. We come up with a bunch of different reasons. So anyway, I like that. That's called predicting and checking the evidence, basically, to help learn to undo some assumptions that might be happening. So yeah, that's my community box, I would say. Yeah, I love that. And I love the approach of thinking about, OK, what can we do to educate parents and teachers, but then also helping the clients come up with strategies of because we can't run like, of course, the goal of stuttering awareness would be for everyone to be accepting and all that. But that's likely not going to be the case. So I love incorporating those strategies of just coping with those rude responses, because I think unfortunately, that's just it's life no matter whether we stutter or whatever, whether we have like brown hair, pink hair, whatever it is, there's always going to be that. So I love that. Okay, should we dive into the society piece? Oh yeah, okay, sure. Okay, this is the big one. I know, well, this is a good one in the sense that I think the tide is turning. There's more and more awareness and more people having their voices be heard. So yes, that is the driving force of the normalized stuttering movement. And I've asked people who stutter, you know, when will we know when stuttering is normalized? What is the day where we can be like, okay, we kind of, made it. And so people have said, you know, when there's a person who stutters on a TV show and it's not a big deal, right? And I just heard a podcast because Mark Winsky consulted on the Penguin series. And there is an actor there who does not stutter who he consulted with to help stutter authentically. And I'm like, that is a good baby step because a major production company decided very intentionally to have a character who stutters and they were very good about consulting people who stutter to make it honor and align with what their, as best they could, their real experiences are. So I think that's a good first step, but... you know, where is that actor that's just in a show that, you know, you don't make a big deal, he just stutters and he's just, you know, going about life. And another person said that stuttering will be normalized when we could say that we stutter just as easily as we say our pronouns. You know, and pronouns haven't, that was a relatively recent shift where this is, you know, just what we do. And wouldn't that be great if you could just say, Hi, I'm Dan Rye Stutterer and I use she her pronouns. So to me in the society side of things, there's strength in numbers too. So there's like 81 million people who stutter on the earth. You literally can make the largest nicest street gang ever. Like if you really banded together, you have the power of numbers. And so literally every stuttered voice that comes out chips away at that. So the more the better. So every voice is a baby step to that kind of change of normalizing. So I encourage people to take up space, put your authentic self forward. Don't feel like you have to hide it. You know, do the opposite to the degree that you're comfortable and just step into your full power and stutter. I think that's the actual change. Change making is the actual voices of people stutter and other allies, you know, supporting that and giving that platform to them. So that's why I'm trying to make a dent in that process myself. But yeah, the normalized stuttering challenge was a part of that. So I told you before that we lost a child who stutters to suicide. And so he was 12 years old, devastating, right? This is the kind of thing that like permanently changes your life. And I had worked with him for seven years, and I wasn't working with him at the time. And, you know, there's just so much wrapped up in that that is painful. And I was really motivated because of that. And more recently, an article came out in People Magazine about his death, because his mom is advocating for rights at the state level to protect people from that. And the article came out, so I'm seeing pictures of Ryan, you know, in a magazine that I got off the shelf, you know, from a grocery store. And on that same day, Trump had made fun of Biden's stutter. And so something like changed inside of myself, like this needs to stop, right? Like we need to, as a society, not laugh at these things. Like it's of grave importance. And so the normalized stuttering challenge was for people to take a video of themselves. And if they stutter, they say, stutter and I'm worth listening to. And for allies do say, if you stutter, I'm listening. so I helped spread this out with some colleagues from stutterology, Ezra, Mackenzie from Talking Town Books, who's a kiddo who stutters and she wrote a book. which I'll recommend too, and Martha's speech, who's now from Young Stutters. So we helped spread that and it was amazing. I think on day two, I heard from somebody in Africa who made the video. I mean, it went really fast and so exciting to see people be like, this was really hard for me. I didn't want to do it. I'm never on social media. And those are the voices that stand up. And then the people who love them also making the videos. Anyway, so that I'm kind of like wanting to do more of to keep bringing in, making the community wider in those ways. And I was pleasantly surprised because I think we're all like, oh, if you go on social media, people are going to troll you and be meanies, right, to the people that you care about. And I literally read every message of anybody who did a video because every time they came in, I was like, ah, so excited. No negative messages. anywhere, like literally none. And so I think it was nice to see that if you're brave and you show your authentic self, people respond positively. So I'm trying to come up with something else like that to do the next round of Stuttering Awareness Week. I'm thinking something like, I won't shut up, something like that. You I won't shut up until stuttering is normalized, something like that. But anyway. Yeah, to me, those are the global things that are happening and that people are responding to and willing to do at this point, which is a good sign for society's change, I think. Yeah, I think that's so incredibly powerful. And I don't have personal experience with the stuttering side of things in terms of that being my lived experience, but I've had experiences with other things that I've struggled with and just getting to see I think not feeling alone is the big thing. And then just seeing people navigate it in a positive way, like, oh, this doesn't have to be like a horrible thing. I think that can be really powerful. And I just love your creativity and navigating that. That's great. And then I'll put your Instagram account in the show notes too. So for anyone listening, if you're curious kind of what this looks like. And yeah. Like if they follow you, then they can join in next time you do the challenge and all of that. This is really cool. Okay, so the majority of speech therapists who listen to this podcast are in the schools. So do you have any, and a lot of what you shared is absolutely applicable and can be used, but do you have any like other ideas or suggestions? Cause I feel like, Being in the school community, we have the opportunity to have our own stuttering challenge as one example. But have you come up with any other ideas or anything else you want to speak to in terms of SLPs in the schools navigating this? Yeah, sure. So I'd say number one is first getting them access to the services, right? I know we hear from a lot of people who say, I know they stutter. They do not meet the criteria to be on my caseload. These are smart kiddos who fly under the radar. They're not standing out in any other way. So we talk a bit about adverse effect and going beyond just academics too. That can be sometimes a way to get students in. So for example, there's a questionnaire that we use called the TASCC. So T-A-S-C-C, I'll link it, but the Teacher Assessment of Student Communicative Competence. So that's for kiddos grades one to five. I sometimes give that to the teacher because it helps identify if there are other participation things that are affected at school that could count for adverse effect if needed. So like participation in field trips, after school activities, it's not just the sitting down in class parts. It's anything to do with their day. And we definitely want to help catch that before avoidance behaviors become habits. So anyway, once we get kiddos on the caseload, if you make it that far, which is great, I do everything that we talked about before. So like the speech machine, the awareness, helping them learn about stuttering and expanding their community. being mindful of their readiness levels and toxic positivity. You know, that part, don't, you know, I may come off as rah-rah, but I'm very delicate about those early stages with the kiddos. They need time. And don't underestimate the power and importance of developing a trusting relationship first. You know, they need to, if you're going to ask them to walk naked through a minefield, they're going to need to trust you first. If you want them to be honest with you and raw about their real experiences, you need to validate where they're at and not try and push them too far too fast. So I don't make assumptions about where people are. I need to ask and listen. And generally, tools are annoying and unsustainable. If you're talking about things that the old set of tools like fluency shaping and things like that and do this, do that, it's just not effective in terms of these are little kiddos self-monitoring certain things constantly. It's just not feasible, not for adults. Like I say, think about if I asked you how many times that you blink during a day, it's like, okay, I've made it 12 seconds and now I'm done. Right? So instead, we need that relationship built and start doing these things to help take risks and accept themselves fully as people who stutter. So counseling skills really come into that. And I think that's where student clinicians get very uncomfortable. They're worried about saying the wrong thing. So even though we're speech people, I definitely listen more than I talk. And some of the strategies that are just full proof would be waiting a full 30 seconds after you say something or ask them a question. And that's good for introverts and for any person who stutters because you're giving them the chance to be their own expert. I really resist the expert role. You know, they'll say directly to me, like, well, what do you think? And I like to just boomerang it right back to them and like, this sounds important to you. What was your take on it? I just kind of refuse and give them the autonomy because we want them to be their own clinicians. We don't want them to overly rely on us. And so if you've got a kiddo who's kind of like, you wait the full 30 seconds and they're like, I don't know. I say, well, if you did know, what would you say? And amazingly, most kids answer that second part question. So I just kind of relentlessly put them in the driver's seat, I guess is how I would describe that. I'm also very aware of the language that I use. like instead of how was this week? Because many people would be like, well, I had a bad day on this day and I, you know, whatever happened. So instead I like to frame it as what are you proud of this week? And similar to what that other student said, you know, for him it was what did you do that would make your younger self proud? So I do recommend if people are interested in counseling, they learn a bit about motivational interviewing. There's quite a lot of that in other medical professions. There's a lot of resources. I'm happy to share some of the ones that I have. But it's a way to listen to the core message and reflect back to them and kind of tag it with their values as well. So like if a kiddo says, I want to be fluent before next year, before next school year. you could say, hey, great, and what would be different if that happened? You can turn it into like a discussion point. So they have to verbalize like what all the things that would be different if that happened. And then they might say, oh, I'd walk with my head up high and talk to everybody. And so you've just learned that their value is confidence, right? Right now they're not doing those things, they're hiding away. So that would bring them confidence. And then you can always attach what you're doing and make goals related to that. In schools, I know this is hard, but if you can work closely with the family, I think it's the most effective to not work in a vacuum. That one hour with you a week, ideally, or whatever you're able to do is just, it's gonna be so much better supported if the family's involved. When I was in a school, I met after school at lunch breaks. That would be something that you would have to decide your willingness to do. but I found it to be far more effective. So, and then you can do a lot of the classic kind of supports like the iceberg, know, what's above the surface, what's below the surface. If there's another kid who stutters in the school, even if they're older, I would put them together, you know, as a little mentor relationship. The older one will like supporting the little, the little will be like, wow, look at this cool older person. You know, I'm a middle-aged lady who does not stutter. I am not the cool person in the room, right? So I'm very intentional about if there isn't anybody who stutters in the school. The National Stuttering Association used to have a mentorship program where they will pair you by interest, you know, like a person who loves basketball. And they don't have that anymore formally, but... I know that if you wrote them and said, I'm looking for somebody in Phoenix who likes fishing, I'm sure that they would find a way to put them person together with them. I would really encourage that. SLPs come to our National Stuttering Association meetings with them, and some kids are really shy. And so we say, you don't even have to have your camera on. You know, talk to us in the chat. We just want you to be there and to listen, and it's totally fine. And then eventually they normally kind of get in. there's also lots of really good books for kids who stutter, like I mentioned before, Talking Town book. Daniel the Digger, very cute. I read that with my niece. And she said, oh, I talk like Daniel sometimes too. I'm like, yes. You know, that's so true. So stuttering, you just have to find what motivates them. So sometimes we'll do a stuttering project. That would be good at a school. You know, maybe they want to make a Jeopardy game. You can make that on Jeopardy Labs. Some kids like to make little flyers about how to listen to people stutter. We've had kids make movies or board games, all kinds of things. And if kids are brave enough, they might do a school presentation, you know, so you could definitely facilitate that. They can participate to the degree they want. Some kids like to plan it but not participate. Other kids like to be right up front there. Sometimes I'll bring in a cool older person who stutters to help with that. We have done a Jeopardy game, the finger traps, just like when you're blocking. There's this what would you do video where there's, I think it was, Well, Mark Winsky, the person who helped on the Penguin movie, he was the actor in that and he was being made fun of at a restaurant. And we kind of talked with the kids, what would you do in this case kind of thing. So anyway, I'm a big proponent of focusing goals, even if you're in a school, on the avoidance reduction kind of values, which would be more about joy, sincerity, authenticity, confidence, spontaneity. connection, efficiency, effortlessness. And there's a really great article, Syskin and Goldstein, 2022, which I can share, that has a lot of really good, very practical ideas for how to do these things, which would totally be easy in a school. Yeah. That's amazing. So many incredible resources. Yeah, the show notes are going to be full. And no, but this is amazing because I feel like you did such a nice job of breaking it down and giving really practical examples of what this could actually look like. Because sometimes in presentations, they'll talk about incorporating counseling and it's like, but what does it look like? And I feel like you just gave us a million different examples, which is so empowering. And you did it in such a beautiful way. So before we close out, do you have any last things you wanted to share? Well, I have a few other resources if that helps the SLPs out there. So I mentioned a couple of times ART, so that stands for avoidance reduction therapy. So Vivian Siskin, she has a, it's called openstuttering.org on YouTube and she's done some beautiful videos there. There's also real people. there who have gone through the program. I really encourage people to just go there and listen. She's doing Coffee with Sarah McIntyre. Awesome. I could listen to them all day. Obviously, the National Stuttering Association, totally life changing for many people. You can find them at westutter.org. I know you interviewed Nina Reeves and Scott Yarris. they have stuttering therapy resources and this great verbal diversity movement, which is really in alignment with these things that we've been talking about. And it has a structured way to talk about these things with kids who stutter. And if they're really into art or however they want to express themselves, they can make it however they want. but it gives a nice structure. And then at Sparrow, they have a really excellent video about, families, that I think is good really for anybody to watch, but that's something else that I can link. Talked a lot about readiness. Naomi Rogers from Iowa, great article about that. I can share it as well. And the 8,000 things we're sharing in the show notes. Definitely follow people who stutter who are on Instagram. I like people like Caitlin Cohen who's, you know, a regular person who stutters who just talks openly about it. Sisters who stutter, all kinds of people. Mark Winski's out there, stutterology. There's just a million. I would encourage you to listen. And when you're doing the famous people who stutter, I know that we asked a lot of people who actually don't stutter anymore. And we're kind of moving away from that, right? So there are people like Michael Crest and, know, Emily Blunt, did hear she still, I heard an interview with her. She still does sometimes stutter. George Springer, who's a baseball player. You know, Elvis stuttered his whole life. So I try and find more people who continue to stutter. when we're talking about famous people. So I guess my message too that I hope people who stutter would take from this and maybe you can carry this forward in your work as SLPs is that fluency is overrated. We're encouraging our students to take back their power, be big, make sure they know that their stuttered voice has value. We're listening to them. They deserve to be heard. They're not alone and do not shut up. I think those are my final messages. I love that. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time and expertise. This was incredible podcast. Again, chock full of resources. So thank you. And yeah, thank you to everyone for listening to you. And that's a wrap.