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Today I did a stuttering assessment. Or I should say that I participated in a stuttering assessment. Let's just say it takes two to count syllables vs. syllables stuttered. It was like way too many syllables for any one person to count.

Here is my train of thought while counting syllables:

"there's one. there's one. and another one. another one. mark. mark. mark. oh wait he stuttered. syllable. syllable. oh crap he stuttered again. oh darn i missed a syllable. oh crap i should stop thinking about missing them. i'm missing more. darn it now he stuttered again. and now i'm 30 syllables behind. i'll just add an extra one for the other one i missed. wait. mark. mark. syllable. just kidding that was a stutter. oh maybe he just paused. syllable. syllable. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.i sure hope shannon counts better than me."

When we were done the entire page I had was covered in little tick marks. I was like wow... I just made a ton of tick marks... that must mean something! I AM AWESOME. I am going to be a champion stutterer diagnoser. Wooo! Watch out SLPs... here I come. But then I hear something. What's that? Shannon's talking to the mother....

"Well Mrs. _____, I didn't see stuttering in his speech that indicated a stuttering problem. He seems to be having dysfluencies that are typical for a teenager. It is possible that he stutters. But it might be covertly, or only with people he is comfortable around. I'm going to need you to tape record him at home."

What? Are you kidding me? I just made nine million little marks on a piece of paper. He must be a stutterer. I mean see this dash here. And this one. Those are stutters. Seee..... Darn it! I'm a failure at stutterer diagnosing.

I guess I'll try again next week.