Teenagers who stutter often come to therapy unclear about what, if anything, they want to change about their stuttering, and why it is important for them to do so. While change in speech fluency is frequently at the top of the list for adolescents (and certainly for speech-language pathologists) this focus can mask more personally meaningful changes, such as the way they and their listeners react to their stuttering. The mismatch between therapy goals and their meaningfulness to the individual can result in noncompliance, relapse or decreased likelihood of continuing in therapy altogether. In this presentation, Dr. Tricia Zebrowski, Ph.D., CCC-SLP reframes motivation as readiness to change and describes ways to help teens identify both what they want to change about their stuttering and what they are ready to take on in the process of doing so.
