Stuttering Hub

Back From BSA Conference

Friends, I came back from the BSA conference today...

It was good to catch up with old friends and make some new ones. I felt particularly inspired when speaking to a couple of people who were attending such an event for the first time! It takes courage and the first step is always the trickiest.

The weather was particularly sunny and warm in London, which was great. In fact, I think we've had better weather since the beginning of September, than the whole summer!

I gave my presentation entitled Cultural and Ethnic Differences in Stammering, which seemed to stir up some debate!

I'm going to be writing a series of future posts looking into issues faced by people who stammer from different cultures and ethnic minority groups... so watch this space.

A Rough Guide To Cuba For Stutterers

Friends I'm back from my adventures!

I arrived back into London yesterday after spending 11 days in Cuba (pronounced Cooba). What a beautiful country Cooba is! - gorgeous sunshine and friendly people.

Below are my list of do's, don'ts and general stuff to watch out for when traveling to Cuba.

List of Do's

1. Make sure you check out Havana (La Habana)

This one goes without saying, but I did speak to some fellow tourists at the beach who hadn't experienced this amazing city. If you are anything like me, and enjoy to experience real culture of the place you are visiting, then you will love Havana! The Spanish colonial buildings and churches in Old Havana are a real sight. The restaurants and bars in this area are fantastic too - some are hidden inside alleys and there is usually live music playing in them. The vintage cars driving around the city are great to watch. If you are in the city for some days, then exploring on foot, at your own pace would be a good bet. If you are time constrained as I was, a city tour is great and affordable.

2. Take some dancing classes while you are there!

Music is a big part of Cuban culture and locals certainly do know how to move their hips! They have some great styles of music including Salsa and Reggaeton. Unfortunately I don't know how to Salsa, but it was great watching people doing it. The movements are extremely coordinated and passionate. I'm definitely taking some classes soon!

3. Experience a roast pork meal

This is traditional Cuban food - roast pork served with rice, beans and onions. I have to admit, the food I sampled was not particularly special in terms of taste (especially as I like my food with a bit of spice), but it was filling.

4. Try out some cocktails!

Cuba is famous for it's rum and their national drink can be found in numerous cocktails. I certainly recommend a refreshing Mojito or a smooth Pina Colada!

5. Try and learn some simple Spanish words

Learning simple words and phrases is great for communicating with locals and they will love you for it! While doing this observe whether your stammering increases or lessens. Mine decreased by the way when using Spanish words, and speaking in English more slowly with a slight accent. Have any of you ever experienced more fluency when doing this?

6. Go to Palacio de La Rumba in Varadero

If you go to the resort town of Varadero and enjoy dancing the night away, then Palacio de La Rumba is the place to be. The DJ's are great and play Cuban music, American Hip Hop and House. I went on Saturday and it was an amazing atmosphere with reasonably priced cocktails and beers.

7. Do take enough cash with you

I had just about enough. I took credit cards as well, but these are not always accepted in places. Taking enough cash which you can convert into local currency for tourists (Cuban Convertible Pesos) is a wise move.

List of Don'ts

Don't go to the Tropicana cabaret show

I really didn't enjoy the Tropicana cabaret show. I know others may say its great. It has been running for 39 years and I have to admit that the singers and dancers are really talented. But my opinion is that it is not worth the entrance fee which will cost a minimum of £70. It's too touristy for my liking. Havana is famous for its cabarets and I'm pretty sure that there are better and smaller ones to see.

As you can see from the above, there are many do's and just one don't and this does represent accurately my opinion of Cuba - it's a fantastic country and I definitely recommend going there. I know I will be going back...

 

 

 

See You In A Couple of Weeks

 

Friends, I'm going on some adventures for the next 10 days.

See you when I get back...

Won in Speech Contest!

I won in our area speech competition last night for best speech! It was terrific!

First we had drinks. Then it was dinner which consisted of a nut roast and mixed veg. Dessert was a yummy cheese cake with blackberries, raspberries and cream. Coffee and mints to top it off.

And then on to the speeches. The title of my speech was 'Chocolate'. I was up against 4 others. After listening to them, I felt I had a good chance. There was one other man whose speech was really good. What he was talking about had a lot of humour in it. Humour is always a crowd pleaser.

Anyway the chief judge after discussions with his deputies came back with the verdict... the funny guy came third. This other lady was runner-up.

I'm thinking now, could this be me?

And lo and behold it was!

I'm now through to the district competition later on in the year...

I'm Back

Hi All. I'm back from my trip to the States. Actually, I was in Alaska for an advanced training course in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). I will discuss the use of NLP in a future post. My trip to the 'Last Frontier', however, was absolutely brilliant. I saw majestic snowy mountains that seemed to be never ending, along with big, fast rushing rivers. I felt the glorious peace of being surrounded by gigantic glaciers, only to be interrupted by the sound of enormous rocks of ice, crashing into the sea. The wildlife was straight out of a Sir David Attenborough BBC documentary. Among other things, I witnessed Killer Whales hunting a Porpoise, saw powerful Bald Eagles, and enjoyed seeing a herd of Sea Lions on a small island. The food was both hearty in portion and delicious in taste. Sea food, unsurprisingly, was the regional speciality, and I sampled very tasty halibut and equally good salmon. I have to admit that the Alaskans could give the Brits a run for their money in terms of quality fish and chips! I had many interesting and unforgettable experiences in Alaska. I will share some of these in future posts.

Attended 8th Oxford Dysfluency Conference

I attended the 8th Oxford Dysfluency Conference at St. Catherine's College, University of Oxford over the weekend. I found it was an extremely interesting event as I was able to speak with a number of Speech and Language therapists specialising in stuttering, and academic researchers carrying out scientific research into stuttering from all over the world. I also got to catch with up with some friends who stutter. A number of interesting presentations were given.

One that struck a chord with me was by Paul Dolan Professor of Economics from Imperial College London (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/paul.dolan). His talk was entitled Stuttering into Happiness. During his presentation, a key point he made was that of “attention” – meaning, that as stammerers, we are always thinking of our thinking about stuttering. He described stuttering as a type of attention seeking disorder (in future posts I will write about methods we can use and practice to try to help keep our attention away from stuttering). Paul has a great confident speaking style, is extremely funny, and is not afraid of using the ‘F’ word when he is presenting!

Jane Fry from the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children (http://www.stammeringcentre.org/s-The_Michael_Palin_Centre) talked about An investigation into the effectiveness of an intensive group therapy programme for teenagers who stutter. She presented positive results from an adolescent’s intensive course made up of a therapy combination of communication skills, speech management and cognitive behaviour therapy. I was pleased to see that such therapeutic efforts were being made with older children, as my own stuttering had a late onset when I was 10 years old.

Tammy Davidson Thompson of the University of East Anglia gave a fascinating insight into the knowledge and experience of speech therapists in her presentation: Is current speech and language therapy practice meeting the psychosocial needs of adults who stutter? Her survey results illustrated that professionals are presently using common therapy approaches such as Avoidance Reduction, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Solution Focused Brief Therapy, and Neuro-linguistic Programming.

However, she mentioned that the use of a combined approach is considered to be the most popular form of therapy. She also highlighted one rather alarming point - there were therapists out there who were using therapy techniques such as CBT without any formal intensive training.

Interestingly, a lot of the talks I attended were emphasising symptoms such as social anxiety and social phobia, and the use of psychotherapy approaches to treat stuttering seemed to be popular at present.

Dr Trudy Stewart who is a speech and language therapist specialising in stammering (co-author of the book which I will review in a future post) gave a talk called Avoidance in adults who stammer: a clinical discussion. She discussed the approach-avoidance conflict theory, where a person who stammers finds themselves in conflict, because a part of them wants to speak and another part does not. She also highlighted Avoidance Reduction Therapy developed by Joseph Sheehan (http://www.stammering.org/adther_nonavoidance.html). Trudy is co-author of the book Coping with Stammering with Jackie Turnbull which I will review in a future post.

On the Sunday, Susan Block of La Trobe University, Australia (http://www.latrobe.edu.au/hcs/staff_profiles/block.htm) gave what I thought was one of the most interesting talks of the two days that I was at the conference. Her talk was called Significant issues in stuttering: Managing stuttering in the next decade. She talked about general difficulties, such as research findings from studies not being put into practice immediately, a lack of public transport in order for people to attend therapies, and the lack of student education. She also talked about the role of speech therapists and how inflexible programmes were being implemented which were unable to respond to the needs of clients adequately and often lacked involvement of parents. More positively however, there were more research opportunities which were developing better treatments. Two examples of ongoing studies which showed evidence of being effective included the Lidcombe Program for Early Stuttering (http://www.stammering.org/lidcombe_info.html) and Intensive Smooth Speech in adolescents and adults (http://www.latrobe.edu.au/istutter/?q=node/37).

At the conference I also met Dr Tom Weidig, who is the owner of the famous Stuttering Brain blog (http://thestutteringbrain.blogspot.com/). Tom has a real passion for stuttering research and debate. If you read this Tom, I really enjoyed talking to you and hope to see you again some time. J

Overall, I was very glad I attended this conference. The researcher in me was curious about what these research studies were displaying but my stuttering part was more interested in what can be done???

It seems that there are lot of speech and language therapists and researchers out there who are passionate about their work and have a real desire to help people who stutter. Had I known this when I first went to see a speech therapist around 6 years ago, I would have investigated them better and insisted I get referred to one who had a real interest in stuttering. Incidentally, the one I got was pretty useless. L