Hi! I'll just paste what I answered another parent a while back :) Our son started to stutter when he was 2.5 years old. We felt the choice of program (Lidcombe etc..) was very important, and before we started any program with the SLP we said in an email we wanted Lidcombe because it seemed to be backed by a lot of research. However before the therapy even started we found some new (at the time) research. In a study they had removed the operant conditioning part of the therapy for one of the groups, and the outcome was mostly the same. Operant conditioning is basically the part where parents praise stutter free speech and maybe ask the child to repeat something if he stuttered. Just writing it makes me cringe, how is that supposed to work anyway, criticizing a child for something they clearly are not in control over, if they had any way of not stuttering they would surely do it that way.. In our first meeting with the SLP we told him this, and he agreed, we decided to start with Palin PCI. He had taken over cases from other SLPs where they had used the Lidcombe program, and he had to involve the whole family, since often the child no longer said what they wanted to at home, the parents always corrected their speech as part of the Lidcombe program. So at the surface it might have seemed like the children stuttered less, but they were just hiding it, even at home. And avoiding shame, anxiety etc about their speech is maybe the most important part of therapy, at least it's a prerequisite for techniques they might want to try to reduce stuttering. He also said that if done right, the Lidcombe program can be just fine, if it's not focused on criticizing speech with stutter, but as a way of talking openly about stuttering, this is a part of any program. I went a bit long on the Lidcombe program here, but it's just so easy for an SLP to follow the manual and really mess it up. He said there is a long running study going now comparing Lidcombe vs mini-kids, it has to go over several years, since it's no point checking how many % of syllables where stuttered at the age of 5. It's more important how they feel about it a little later in life. And as he puts it, what is best, light stuttering on for example 6% of syllables or a massive 20 second block on 0.5% of syllables, it's not a useful way to measure stuttering. So we started with Palin when my son was 2.5. Palin starts out with doing changes to the environment, how we communicate at home and decrease communication pressure. So only indirect stuff, he was to young to participate anyway. We were happy with the program, and could clearly see that the environment affected how much he stuttered. This wasn't going to remove the stuttering, but I don't think any program can do that. As our SLP says, 70 - 80% of children will stop stuttering with or without an SLP, but since we don't know which children will continue to stuttering it's best to start as early as possible. When he was around 4.5 we started with mini-kids, since we thought he was mature enough to maybe participate himself a bit. It starts with desensitizing both the parents and the child, the parents starts adding voluntary stuttering at home, just easy repetitions (which is what we want him to do instead of hard blocks), then we added games where you would gain a benefit if you say something with repetitions. I could go on and on about the details, but the point is first to show him it's okay to stutter and model an easy way of stuttering, then for him to do it himself as part of a game or playtime. Later on when he becomes older he will be asked to stutter voluntary in other parts of the day. The goal is to remove fear, shame and anxiety. In and of itself this is great, but very often it reduces the amount of stuttering as well. I stutter myself, not nearly as much now as when I was a kid, but just being an active part of my sons therapy has reduced my own stuttering drastically, which is an interesting observation :) My sons stuttering goes up and down, as it does for everybody, it's definitely less than when we started, if that is because of the therapy I can't say. But I'm more focused on what comes after, when he is 8,12,15, 20. I don't remember all the details, but Palin would also have introduced being open about stuttering and maybe voluntary stuttering. The programs might look different, and especially Lidcombe, but at the core they are in many ways the same. In Lidcombe you are also supposed to have 15 mins every day with playtime where the focus is your son, and it also says to create an environment with less communication pressure, exactly the same as in Palin. This is not a part of mini-kids, but I recommend it, so we are happy we started with Palin, then added mini-kids, we didn't replace Palin. We bought the Palin book and the mini-kids book. The mini-kids book is kind of a mess, I can almost not recommend it, a new revision is coming soon I believe. Both the books are for SLPs, but especially the Palin book is easy to understand. And by reading a book or two you would know more about stuttering than most SLPs I'm afraid. Palin: https://www.routledge.com/Palin-Parent-Child-Interaction-Therapy-for-Early-Childhood-Stammering/Kelman-Nicholas/p/book/9780815358329  Mini-kids: https://www.lulu.com/shop/veerle-waelkens/mini-kids-direct-therapy-for-young-children-whostutter/paperback/product-23869917.html?page=1&pageSize=4 Podcast episodes I recommend:  https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/stuttertalk/id267440815 - The Impact of Early Childhood Intervention on Those Who Continue to Stutter (Ep. 719) - What Exactly is Working in Preschool Stuttering Treatment? (Ep. 701) (I think they talk about the Lidcombe study here)