PARENTS, FAMILIES AND THE STUTTERING CHILD
edited by Lena Rustin

This book arose out of the second Oxford Dysfluency Conference on 1989 where the British and American contributors presented papers on their research or clinical practice.

The research described in Chapter 3 grabbed my attention straight away, as Meyers describes her research on how the speech of stammering children appears to have an effect on the speech of their parents, and not just the other way round as previously believed. For example, she found that the mother of non-stammerers tended to speak faster when talking to stammering children than to their own non-stammering children. This research could alter the way we view parents' speech as affecting their child's stammer, and opens up a new, complex and bi-directional view of the interaction between a stammering child and their parents.

Chapter 6 describes Rustin, Boterill and Cook's therapy approach for adolescents. They usefully point out that adolescents often receive adapted child therapy techniques, or scaled down adult approaches, rather than therapy designed specifically to suit the distinct period of growth, transition and change experienced by adolescents.

I was both stimulated and informed by the end of this slim volume. I would recommend it to therapists and students, but not to most stammerers or parents who, I believe, would unfortunately soon drown in the welter of professional jargon.

Reviewed in the Autumn 1991 issue of 'Speaking Out' by Louise Wright

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