Strategies for Treating Elementary School-Age Children Who Stutter

Abstract

The speech-language pathologist plays a critical role in the treatment of the elementary school-age child who stutters. The purpose of this article is to describe a model of service delivery for these children that emphasizes the integration of fluency-shaping and stuttering modification approaches. Procedures and techniques of previously published programs are supplemented with suggestions by the present authors. The treatment program is divided into three phases. Phase I is a description of procedures used to have the child understand and identify fluency and stuttering. Phase II involves a discussion of techniques for the instruction and integration of fluency-shaping and stuttering modification procedures. In Phase III, transfer and maintenance of speech improvement procedures are described briefly.