Case study: helped over the bumps

Maggie Jones
Wednesday, November 7, 2001

Lesley's daughter Olivia started to stammer when she was just over the age of two. Lesley recalls, 'I was expecting it, because my elder daughter had a stammer, and it runs in the family. I stammered myself, my father and grandfather stammered and I also had an aunt with a really bad stammer. My elder daughter had been helped by a speech and language therapist (SLT) who had been trained in the Lidcombe method, so I wanted the same help for Olivia. But by then, this SLT was no longer available.' Olivia would repeat the same syllable over and over - 'b-b-b-b-book,' and stretch out words -'Wwwwant a drink.' She had a phase of blinking, and another phase where she would take a loud intake of breath before each word. 'We saw a general SLT but this didn't help Olivia,' says Lesley. 'It took me six to nine months of fighting to get a referral to the Michael Palin Centre in central London. Initially we had a four-hour meeting for the whole family to talk about the background and decide on the therapy.Then Olivia started going once a week from January.