Vijay, Parmanand and me (J.P.) went to Lal Bahadur Shastri school (Herbetpur, Dehradun) yesterday, to conduct group speech therapy session for school children. We started with "Stuttering Award" activity, where kids were competing for various awards like longest stutter award, loudest stutter award, best singing stutter award etc. The basic idea was to desensitize children towards their stutter, to promote frienship among kids and us, and to introduce them to various ways to stutter easily. Vijay was a bit apprehensive about doing this activity, as some of the kids may think that they have come here for treatment and not to stutter more, but to all of us it came as a surprise when one of the kid. during feedback session, told that he liked this activity the most! (We also participated but didn't manage to win any awards. Surely I could have won "the ugliest stutter award", if one was there! :)) This was in sharp contrast with what I observed in Pune Self Help Group (SHG) where all the participants were adults and some of them were not comfortable with voluntary stuttering. Next activity was to put down all your creativity on a piece of paper - Painting Competition. we should have also participated in this and we will make sure we do from next time. The kids spoke a few sentences about their painting. We concluded with a feedback session. The kids were not really open, when we asked what they didn't like during the session. Probably they will take their time to open up and see us as as their friends.
That wud ve been interesting ........
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