Wondering if your child has a speech or articulation problem?
Most children make mistakes with speech sounds as they learn to say new words. A speech sound disorder occurs when mistakes continue past a certain age. The Montreal Fluency Centre provides individualized assessment and treatment for children with speech sound delays or disorders.
Stuttering
About 5% of children have an episode of stuttering that starts between 2-4 years of age.
As of October 2022, stuttering assessment and treatment services will no longer be provided at the Montreal Fluency Centre.
Instead, these services will be offered privately by Dr. Rosalee Shenker and Ms. Gissella Santayana. They can be reached through their website at www.stuttering-montreal.com
Treatment
For more information about treatments for preschool age children see Shenker, R.C., & Santayana, G. (2018). What are the options for treatment of stuttering in preschool children? Seminars in Speech and Language.
For information about the Lidcombe Program for treatment of stuttering in young children go to www.lidcombeprogram.org
The North-American Lidcombe Program File Audit is a good example of what is available for treatment of preschool stuttering.
About the Lidcombe Program
The Lidcombe Program for Early Intervention in Stuttering is a behavioural treatment that teaches parents to notice and gently comment on their child’s stuttering when at home. Parents learn how to give this feedback during visits with a speech pathologist. The program eliminates the progression of stuttering in preschool children in an average of eleven treatment hours.
Developed by Dr. Mark Onslow, director of the Australian Stuttering Research Centre at the University of Sydney, the program was first tested on 54 children aged three to six. Of these, 29 received treatment, 25 did not. The severity of stuttering was similar in both groups. After nine months, the group that received therapy reduced its stuttering by an average of 77%; the group that received no treatment reduced its stuttering by only 43%. The Lidcombe Program was clearly shown to be a clinically effective treatment for stuttering in preschool children.
Benchmark studies show that treatment times are similar to other programs and as effective for bilingual children.
The MFC specializes in individualized treatment programs for school-age children. We also specialize in the assessment and treatment of complex cases where stuttering exists alongside other speech and language concerns such as ASD, ADD, language disorder and phonology/speech disorder.
Our focus is on the treatment of bilingual and multicultural families of children who stutter.
As a founding member of the Lidcombe Program Trainers Consortium, clinicians at the MFC have helped train over 3,000 speech-language pathologists in the method in workshops across Canada and the USA.
To seek treatment for your child, visit www.stuttering-montreal.com.