My Client Knows That He's About to Stutter: How Can We Address Stuttering Anticipation during Therapy with Young People Who Stutter?

Stuttering anticipation is endorsed by many people who stutter as a core aspect of the stuttering experience. Anticipation is primarily a covert phenomenon and people who stutter respond to anticipation in a variety of ways. At the same time as anticipation occurs and develops internally, for many individuals the “knowing” or “feeling” that they are about to stutter is a primary contributor to the chronicity of the disorder. In this article, we offer a roadmap for both understanding the phenomenon of anticipation and its relevance to stuttering development. We introduce the Stuttering Anticipation Scale (SAS)—a 25-item clinical tool that can be used to explore a client's internal experience of anticipation to drive goal development and clinical decision making. We ground this discussion in a hypothetical case study of “Ryan,” a 14-year-old who stutters, to demonstrate how clinicians might use the SAS to address anticipation in therapy with young people who stutter.