"It has been quite a remarkable journey for my son and I for this past one year. Jacob* started stuttering around age 6. Initially my husband and I did not pay much attention to this and were under the impression that with age it will go away automatically without any interventions. Few months later, we realised that instead of a decrease in stuttering there was an increase day by day.
Mary Erian, our speech pathologist, has welcomed Jacob's case and worked diligently with him to bring down his stuttering ratings from an 8 to a level 2. When he first started the speech therapy in early 2016, he was age 7, which meant that Lidcombe Program might not be beneficial. Therefore slow motion speech with lots of praise was introduced. He immediately connected to this idea and happily incorporated this strategy into his daily speech. He refers to this strategy as downhill talking or whale talking and has successfully applied it in both English and Arabic language.
Mary has been very supportive and encouraging at all times. She not only taught Jacob different strategies of how to control his stutters, but also taught me how to execute and manage a speech therapy session at home. Her tremendous patience and support has helped us overcome this challenge. Jacob never complained of attending a therapy session. He was always eager to practice and learn new strategies by Mary. I believe without her support, we wouldn’t have come so far.
Presently, Jacob is a confident speaker and has learned how to control his stutters. He doesn’t get as many blocks as compared to last year. My husband and I have also noticed how Jacob’s personality has changed over this past year with improvement in his speech. Overall, he is a happy child and is very proud of his achievement"
*Name changed for confidentiality purposes.
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Mary has helped my preschool and now primary school daughter with both a stutter and pronunciation issues. She easily engages children and is highly professional with a wealth of experience. I was very concerned about the stutter and not only is my daughter now stutter free but she calmed my concerns as a parent. I highly recommend her.
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It has been a pleasure getting to know Mary. she helped my child with character lisp. She is very pleasant and managed to handle a fussy pre-teen. She is very flexible and patient. we really enjoyed having her around. I highly recommend Mary.
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It’s easy to recommend Mary, based on feedback from the many patients I’ve encouraged to see her; who benefited from her expertise. The collaborative work I’ve done together with Mary has been a lot of fun and brought me many insights for my practice of clinical psychology. She is warm, committed and professional. A pleasure to work with.