Stammering Impacting Mental Health
In the interest of safeguarding, this child has been referred to as ‘Timmy’ throughout the case study.
Our Speech and Language Therapist, Katy, has been working with Timmy following the diagnosis of stammering and how this impacts how he communicates with others. He has been receiving intervention with Chatterbug since January 2023. We have been working within his setting since 2018.
Background
Timmy has been struggling with making himself properly understood by others, due to his stammer. Sadly, due to the difficulties he experiences with making himself understood and being able to communicate with others, Timmy has been struggling with his mental health. Not being understood by others has gone on to impact his confidence and can make talking quite a frustrating experience!
In addition, when he has not had the time to be listened to and conversation partners to be patient, it can be very invalidating to those who experience stammering. It’s important to remember their voice and words are as valid as everyone else’s.
Timmy is currently in Key Stage 1, so it’s vital to provide this intervention and support now. By receiving essential SLT input and intervention, Timmy will be able to continue his academic career with a much more positive experience.
How did Chatterbug help?
To help tackle Timmy’s confidence when speaking, Katy showed him a variety of stammering strategies to help make speaking clearer and easier.
She found the most effective method to be ‘buzz breathing’. This strategy encourages the individual to take a deep breath before speaking. This strategy aids him so that he has enough breath to get his whole sentence out. This makes his speech much clearer.
With buzz breathing, they also tried sliding into words. This strategy means elongating the beginning of a word and speeding up for the rest of the word – as if you’re going down a slide!
To help engage Timmy in his therapy sessions, Katy used games. Engaging him with games makes therapy much more interactive and effective in taking it all on board! Games they used included pop-up pirates, naughts and crosses and dominoes.
The purpose of games in Timmy’s therapy was to help motivate him to make general conversation whilst playing. Katy would also use these games as a wind down after a session well done!
With these, Katy also used talking games, such as ‘Would You Rather’, to encourage him to talk by picking an answer and explaining why he picked this one.
Additionally, it is absolutely vital to make the intervention consistent in school and at home. This makes it more likely to have a better success rate. To do so, we made sure that both teachers and parents were aware of his intervention and the strategies they could use to support him across settings and environments.
Timmy’s progress to date
Since receiving intervention with Chatterbug, Timmy is now a much more confident speaker! With this new confidence, his speech is much clearer and his stammer bothers him less. He has found he is now much more easily understood by others and can express himself better.
Katy will continue to work on his confidence in speaking and reviewing as the intervention continues.
What has Timmy said about their therapy?
Prior to receiving the intervention, Timmy’s mum was very concerned about his mental well-being. Now that Timmy is a much more confident speaker, concerns regarding his mental health have eased and he can enjoy a much more positive academic and social experience!
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