In January 2019, our daughter who had always been advanced with her speech, developed a stutter - literally overnight. It was distressing for her, and for us as parents, to see our daughter struggling to communicate – something she’d always done so well. Not ones to watch and wait, we had her assessed by a speech pathologist and then commenced the Lidcombe program with Lauren Brown. The scenario was very daunting to begin with, no one wants their child to struggle with adversity and given speech is such a fundamental skill, we were 100% committed to doing whatever it took to help her.

Our daughter takes a while to warm to new people, but quickly established an excellent connection with Lauren. She is fantastic with Amelia and equally so, to us as parents. She explained our role with the Lidcombe program and helped us to ensure we were confident in delivering it in the home environment. Lauren has provided us with so much more than speech therapy. She identified characteristics in Amelia which were traits of a highly sensitive child and all of the sudden, so much made sense. Her high sensitivity was linked so closely with her speech. Once this was identified, not only could we work with the Lidcombe program, but we could implement other strategies to reduce stimulus which would often worsen her stutter. We’ve been able to adapt our parenting style to better suit the needs of our child. Not only have we learnt how to keep Amelia’s stutter under control, but have a plethora of tools which help maintain the environment she needs to continue with her beautiful smooth speech. Now, 21 months later, you would not believe that our daughter ever had a stutter.