Rehan Nasir from "Hello I stutter" visited me in Luxembourg

Rehan Nasir from the Hello I stutter blog visited me in Luxembourg last year... sorry I am a bit with my posts! ;-) We had a good discussion, a summary of which you can read in this post, and here is his email and story.

Tom,

I wanted to sincerely thank you for meeting up with me in Luxembourg last week. I really enjoyed the tour of your city as well.

I thought a lot about what you told me -- getting out of my comfort zone, breaking the associations that I've had for so long, and testing out theories with regards to speaking (as in, what's going to happen? I don't know -- but I won't die). So thank you very much for that insight. I will definitely write more about them on the blog, helloistutter.com
I wanted to finally send along a guest post (send some of your readers my way!) -- it actually does deal with a lot of what you said. Although it happened weeks ago (I've been slowly coming out for months now). I think you'd be proud of my determination.

Here goes:

I'm someone who stutters, and I'm someone who also likes to ride my road bicycle. But when I came to Saudi Arabia more than three years ago for work, I didn't know anybody who also rode. And since I was a covert stutterer, I didn't really ask around too much either. I would occasionally go on solo rides on the wide open roads we have in our small town, but I missed the camradarie of riding with even one other person.

SLTs that stutter

Oli writes:

I am an SLT student and a person who stutters. I run a website with details of SLTs/SLPs who stutter (here) to encourage others who stutter to consider it as a career. I noticed that, in a recent post, you mention a speech therapist who stutters and wondered if you knew of any others. Perhaps you would consider posting a link on your blog or asking your readers if they know of any.

Can you travel to Knoxville? Calling on all pws, cws, and children who have recovered!

Can you help Tiffani?

Calling all people who stutter, children who stutter, and children who have recovered from stuttering! My name is Tiffani Kittilstved, I am a person who stutters and a PhD student researching stuttering at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN. 

For one of my PhD projects, I am recruiting local adults and children who stutter as well as children who have recovered from stuttering. Our general age group for kids is 7-12 but we are somewhat flexible in those ages (younger and older may be accepted, decisions will be made case by case). The purpose of my research is to better understand speech processes and how they are affected by stuttering. We use EEG technology, it is non-invasive and completely safe. The experiment involves sitting in a sound proof booth for about 1 hour and listening to tones/speech and discriminating whether the speech/tones that you heard are the same or different. It is a very simple task. The participant will be hooked up to an EEG machine via a cap that has electrodes built into it. This will record brain activation/deactivation in specific regions and allow us to understand what happens in the brains of children who stutter during speech perception tasks and how that differs from children who have recovered from stuttering. 

Participating in this research project will involve compensation and only cost you a couple hours of your time. So if you, or someone you know stutters (an adult or child) or has recovered from stuttering (child) and is in/will be in the Knoxville, TN area, for at least 2 hours, please contact me! My contact info is tkittils@uthsc.edu. Thank you!!!! 

Best, Tiffani Kittilstved

Test Mindool

Here is an example of an embedded Mindool into a blog post. Please click on list or procon to get one example.

Suvery on Multilingualism: Need input from SLTs

Graduate student Kimberly Martins writes:
As a Speech-Language Pathologist, you are invited to participate in an online survey research project collecting information on clinical practice in the evaluation and treatment of multilingual people who stutter around the world. This is an opportunity for you to contribute your professional experience working with this important population within the past two years. Completing the survey should take about 15 minutes. The survey is anonymous. You do not need to complete this survey in one sitting. If you need to, you can stop working on the survey, even close your browser and turn off your computer. Then return to the survey at a convenient time by clicking on the Survey Name below in this invitation to resume where you left off and complete it when you have the time. I appreciate your willingness to participate. Feel free to share this invitation with colleagues. 

Click here: Stuttering and Multilingualism Survey

The most important conclusions from the Franken study on early-childhood intervention

Here is my summary of the Franken study (see here and a StutterTalk interview) after a first reading. Add your comments if you disagree!


The two most important clinically relevant statements are

1. If your child has been stuttering for six months, does not have any obvious speech and language development issues and is treated by a specialist, it has a three-in-four chance to fully recover within 18 months of treatment.
2. It is not important whether your child receives direct (Lidcombe) or indirect (DCM) treatment.