What is it? It is a program for preschool children who stutter. It works best from approximately ages 3 1/2 to 6. Of course every child is different so I would have to evaluate the child first. It views stuttering as a behavior to eliminate. We teach parents how to provide therapy at home. It is a fun approach. Children love it and it encourages quality speaking time between parents and children. What is also wonderful is that you keep a chart at home so you know if the child is progressing. For those of you who don’t know, I am in Long Island, NY. Believe it or not I have provided consulting as far as Milan, Italy.
I do not recommend modifying a child’s speech pattern at this young age with stretchy speech. My first goal is to attempt to eliminate the stuttering.
My son is currently under the lidcombe programme. In fact, he has been in the programme for 4,5 months. His stuttering ratings (done by me) dropped from 9 to 5. Is there still a good chnace that he will drop to 1? When do you think this will happen?
How is your son doing with Lidcombe?
His ratings have dropped to 2, five months later. So he dropped from 9 to 2 in 9 months. That very good, but, who can say that this wasnt a spontaneous recovery ? 9 months is a lot of time!
Tks for commenting. Honestly we don’t know but if a child exhibits risk factors of beginning stuttering why wait. The risk of them being lifelong stutterers is too great.
Hi Lori, I’m a speech therapist and would like to learn more about the Lidcombe program. If you’d be able to advise me where to start i.e., books, workshop,dvds etc. I would greatly appreciate it.Thanks in advance.
Thanks for reading. I would recommend looking up the Montreal Fluency Center website and contacting a SLP named Rosalee Shenker. I am not sure when the next training is but she can help you. You can also google a simplified training manual online, but I would suggest ordering the book from amazon. Hope this helps. Lori
Well, as a pretty handy guy, at times… I appreciate your blog. Need to learn everything I can.
My son had been stuttering for three years. We tried everything we could to help him. My father has been a severe stutterer for his whole life, so there was a good chance that my son would never outgrow his stuttering.
I ordered the lidcombe book in desperation since kindergarten was just around the corner. I am not a therapist myself, but I am a neuroscientist and I read the clinician’s book cover to cover twice to learn how to use the program.
I graphed the progress diligently to keep track of his improvement. After only two weeks, there was clear improvement and after two months, the stuttering had been reduced to a level we could live with: normal, occasional disfluency. It has been three years now and even that dropped out. We continued to use the program for about another 4 months after his stuttering was pretty much gone for a total of 6 months of therapy.
He was almost 6 when we started.
I left a review of the lidcombe book on amazon, and here’s my email address if anyone has specific questions: dbacssm at comcast dot net.
Hi,
my son will be 9 in July, can I still use this program? I am veru angry with my self for listening to the “don’t worry he will grow out of it”, now it’s “oh it’s not too bad”. I live in San Antonio TX and would greatly appreciate any help you can give us. Thank you.
Andrea
Hi. I can understand your anger. Parents are all too often told to wait when they shouldn’t but there is still hope. He is too old for a strict Lidcombe program in my opinion but can still improve fluency with a fluency shaping approach. Lori
We took our daughter Angelina to Lori for speech theraphy for about a year, we are very happy with the results. Angelina started stuttering when she was approximately 2.5 years old and was becoming aware of her speech problem. On her worst days, she could not say a word, which worried my wife and I tremendously.
My wife Victoria found Lori’s information online, we visited Lori in Long Island and started Lidcombe program. Over the next year, Angelina’s stuttering rating dropped from 9-10 to a virtually unnoticable pauses in our daughter’s speech.
My wife and I are very thankful to Lori for working with our daughter and helping her overcome stuttering.
Lidcombe really does wonders. Thank you Lori for all your help!!!