The many approaches to dealing with stuttering

A speech therapist at the Future Centre in Abu Dhabi lists the choices


A 27-year old Indian civil engineer studying for his PhD in the US was grappling with a problem. He had to defend his thesis in front of his professors but felt handicapped because of his tendency to stutter accompanied by secondary behaviour such as head jerks, twitching eyes and feet stamping. In desperation, he knocked on the doors of a speech therapist.

The therapist in question was the young Haider Wreidan, a post-graduate in speech therapy from the University of Central Florida.

The case of the civil engineer is just one in Wreidan's portfolio. The therapist, who moved to Abu Dhabi and recently joined the Future Centre, the School for Children with Special Needs, narrated his experiences with similar cases.

"Unlike in the UAE, there's a very high awareness about dealing with stuttering in America," said Wreidan. "While there's a shroud of silence on this issue here, there are clubs, associations and support groups in the US, and children with this problem are very much integrated in mainstream schooling."

He stressed that there many approaches to handling the problem. It may not cure it completely but make it less visible and more in control. For example, for the civil engineer, Wreidan used the Clams Approach devised a couple of years ago by Dr Hedrick Lanna in Florida. The method involves resorting to "pauses" and "linking words" to reduce stuttering. For example, the person is taught to take a time-out or pause or take a short breath after each dysfluency or between the first and the second sound in a word.

Similiarly, the speech therapist tries to make them link the last sound of the first word and the first sound of the second word to break stuttering. The person could resort to these two exercises when they are about to stutter, says Wreidan.

They are tricks or ammunition to dip into whenever they want to control their stuttering, he says. The treatment also involves taking the students out to restaurants and placing meal orders on the phone to practise these exercises.

The causes could be psychological, environmental or genetic. A sudden trauma or an accident could have led to the problem. Children at school could have aggravated a mild stuttering problem. It could even be the result of a genetic problem.

Asked about his leaning towards stuttering cases, Wreidan said: "It has to do with something very basic in human nature. It's also very visible and apparent and carries a social stigma especially among children. It also hampers adults in a highly competitive world."

The field of speech therapy is pretty new in the Middle East, adds Wreidan. People are hazy about the kind of work speech therapists deal with. Among the latest developments in the field is a "speech free" device. This can be located either outside or inside the ear or inserted in the ear canal. It alters the disruption in the person's fluency.

There are other methods such as Van Riper's fluent stuttering approach, where the stutterer is desensitised about his dysfluency and his stuttering modified. In the fluency shaping method, the person has to go through breathing exercises and syllable prolongation.

It depends entirely on the therapist to pick the one that works best for a person.