Neurodiversity and Stuttering
I had the opportunity to listen to a podcast with Chris Constantino, who is a speech language pathologist and a person who stutters. In his podcast, he discusses the neurodiversity movement and how some its beliefs, namely the acceptance and value of differences, can be applied when working with our clients who stutter. Treatment, he reports, shouldn’t focus on forcing individuals to be fluent, but rather, should focus on overall quality of life and exploration and acceptance of an individual’s stutter. One of the activities he would complete when working with middle school students included reacting to negative comments or micro aggressions from others. He engaged the students in role playing and had them practice how to teach people about
