Friday, April 01, 2011

Lidcombe never fails, only parents do

Here is a comment from a mother in which she says the therapist blames them for the relapse, because Lidcombe works so it must be the parents:
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

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

the variability of stuttering....let's blame Tom!

Who was the therapist?

Maybe the therapist is stupid ass??

Maybe she didn't know lidcombe, the clinician administering the programme matters too???

Tom Weidig said...

Well, maybe stuttering is a neurobiological issues that cannot really be fixed?

Maybe the success is down to natural recovery rate, temporary fluency gains like in adults, and measurement bias?

Anonymous said...

you know when you say this, this is blasphemy. Like the kid pointing out the emperor (onslow) has no CLOTH.

"Maybe the success is down to natural recovery rate, temporary fluency gains like in adults, and measurement bias?"

Anonymous said...

"Failure in therapy is never the fault of the therapy or the therapist; It is ALWAYS the fault of the client." (CWS, parent of CWS, or the Adult PWS)

Regards -
The Professional Fluency Nazi, more commonly known as the speech & language therapist.

Anonymous said...

In my experience failure in therapy is the failure of the therapist and the client. Most of time when you go for stuttering therapy you see someone that knows nothing about stuttering. Their knowledge depends largely on where they go, not necessarily the quality of the overall program. If someone goes to a school that has a doctoral program that specializes in stuttering their knowledge will potentially be good. The downside is the many stuttering experts are like frauds Onslow and Packman, and the PhD students in communication disorders (unfortunately even the stuttering students with stuttering problems) where I'm from are low quality in comparison to other programs. These people are also guaranteed a tenure track position because there is such a shortage of stuttering PhDs. At my university, you sometimes see interdisciplinary professors in human development teaching future early childhood teachers that stuttering is caused by uncertainty resulting from parents not allowing children to become confident in what they're saying.

The fact is the people that want to become speech therapists or to train them are the very lowest quality. They don't even try to stay current on research or they can't understand it. It's not that they're hard working and well meaning, but not very smart. Those are the people I have a lot of respect for. It's the ones that want to put in a minimal amount of work so they can get drunk every night. They're the ones that would want to be put in a position where they don't have to learn about how to treat stuttering and fail miserably treating clients. These are also the most common speech therapists and teachers.

Anonymous said...

Are you telling the truth, last anon?

who are you, last anon?

That last message should not be deleted!

Basically, are you saying that current stuttering "experts" and future "experts" are not very smart, some just want to get drunk every night, some can't even understand good high level research

Anonymous said...

I never said anything about experts. I'm sure they're intelligent. You won't find many geniuses but there will be some. I was talking about speech therapists (non-experts) that don't give a shit about their job and get pissed off when they get a stuttering client when they haven't been trained and make no effort to learn about stuttering. There are a lot of these people.

Anonymous said...

Wow, what's with the Onslow bashing? It's well recognised the Lidcombe program isn't 100% successful, perhaps some of the speech pathologists delivering the treatment are not adequately trained either, but can any of you suggest an alternative treatment, rather than suggesting a treatment proven to have some success hasnt' worked in this situation?

Anonymous said...

It has nothing to do with success rate. It's the idea that stuttering is a neurobiological problem that can not be fixed with therapy period. Libcombe should be 100% successful for children who spontaneously recover and 0% with children who don't (except maybe reducing severity). Their data is consistent with the natural recovery rate with the age group they're looking at and therefore has an alternative explanation.

Anonymous said...

Does the Lidcombe programme increase the rate of spontaneous recovery in children who normally will spontaneous recovery?

Does the Lidcombe speed up the process???

Does the Lidcombe have no effect at all on children who will not spontaneous recovery.

If the Lidcombe even helps a little better, then it is a good program for children who stutter.

Anonymous said...

How about the Demand and Capacity Model program?

Why blame the therapist, no program is 100% perfect. NO program works on everyone.

Stupid....the Lidcombe program is not a cure for stuttering.

Yes, blame the children, blame Tom, blame the parents, blame the therapist, just don't blame Mark Onslow or the Lidcombe program itself.

If the Lidcombe gets all the credit, it should get all the blame also.

Anonymous said...

Some anon above said: "It has nothing to do with success rate. It's the idea that stuttering is a neurobiological problem that can not be fixed with therapy period."

==> And how exactly do you know (not just imagining things in your head, but scientifically) that unlike both (a) typical brain development and (b) every other neurodevelopmental problem, training/learning/practice/response contingent stimuli have no effect on neuronal growth factors, synapse formation, dendritic pruning, synaptic weights, etc in the case of stuttering??? The brain of children who stutter is not a human brain???

Same person said "Libcombe ... data is consistent with the natural recovery rate with the age group they're looking at and therefore has an alternative explanation."

==> That is absolutely untrue. You are just repeating what Tom is feeding you -- nonscientific made-up nonsense. Natural recovery rate studies show, on average, a recovery rate of around 50% of all the kids in the study are followed for many years. Lidcombe shows recovery of around 90% of all the kids in the study after a few months. If you take the natural recovery data and look at them after the same period of time you would have a recovery rate of about 10-20%. It makes no sense to spread lies and say that the rates of natural recovery and Lidcombe are the same.

Maybe you are more insensitive and do not care if children who stutter have to go for several more months or years (and in many cases that do not show natural recovery, an entire lifetime) with stuttering (and be subjected to the negative experiences, frustration, and bullying that come with it) but luckily most people who stutter and most people trying to help people who stutter are different from you and they DO care enough about those children to offer help when the problem occurs so that those children may recover when they normally wouldn't have or may, at the very least, recover much much fast even if they were among the group that would recover spontaneously.

Do yourself and everybody who stutters a favor and stop repeating the negativity and personal frustration that Tom spreads on the internet.

Robin Timmerman said...

Good posting and interesting discussion. I just found this page when googling for a link to the Lidcombe program. If you're interested in another controversial posting about Lidcombe, then read http://stutteringtherapy.ca/therapies/stuttering-pre-schoolers-and-lidcombe-therapy .

Anonymous said...

Why is this blog alway negative? Many people find control and sometimes cure for their stutters yet this site always puts down everything and everyone who suggests such. I'm not completely fluent but in some situations I am and in the others I improve each month. See me on you tube by typing "int speech", competing in the National Final for public speaking. The only people I ever see improve are those who are positive and confront the issues rather than avoid the pain this causes temporarily. Does the Lidscombe Programme work? I'm sure it does, it has been clinically tested. Is it the problem or fault of the parent, maybe, maybe not. If you deny it works, and deny I am mostly fluent, what is your motivation for doing so? And has this mindset allowed you to move on yet? I don't think so. Rob Woolley

CreativeSheep said...

Good gravy. I came across this while doing research for a friend whose 3 year old has started stuttering. I am a geriatric SLP. I had a very basic knowledge of dysfluency from a VERY competent and excellent professor in college. True, not every SLP is an "expert" in stuttering. However, every SLP is competent to do research! Here is a comparisson (though not very good due to lack of sufficent research) on Lidcombe (direct therapy) vs Demand and Capacity (indirect therapy). I would like to think that if I can equip myself with such knowledge, SLPs who are actually TREATING dysfluency can do more. http://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/EBSRFluencyDisorders.pdf#search=%22preschool%22

Anonymous said...

As a person with a PhD in Neuroscience, a background in research and 13 journal articles published in decent journals that has changed career to become a SLP - I have never been so offended in my life! I have never worked so hard as I have had to to complete this course and would rather undertake two more PhD's than go through the training an SLP has to go through again. More respect for the profession Anon.

Unknown said...

I am doing a presentation tomorrow about the Lidcombe Program and the success rates of the participants in many studies published in peer reviewed journals. I LOVE what Anon said, "==> That is absolutely untrue. You are just repeating what Tom is feeding you -- nonscientific made-up nonsense. Natural recovery rate studies show, on average, a recovery rate of around 50% of all the kids in the study are followed for many years. Lidcombe shows recovery of around 90% of all the kids in the study after a few months. If you take the natural recovery data and look at them after the same period of time you would have a recovery rate of about 10-20%. It makes no sense to spread lies and say that the rates of natural recovery and Lidcombe are the same."------Brilliant! I got chills reading this persons response. Wish they were not Anon so I can send he/she a thank you letter.

Other than that, just skimming the net trying to find any side notes that might be insightful for my presentation tomorrow. I think the Lidcombe Program sounds great. Both my kids stuttered in their preschool years and recovered naturally and I was always told not to bring any attention to their stuttering and always let them finish what they have to say. In doing my research project on the Lidcombe Program, I see now that doing the opposite and actually praising un-stuttered speech and correcting stuttered speech proves to be beneficial and can speed up the natural recovery rate.

I am studying to become an SLP and I think some of the above comments are ludicrous! I also know that some people just like to rile folks up too for their own entertainment.