The Lidcombe Program is a behavioral therapy program for preschool children designed to treat stuttering at its early stages. The treatment approach involves the direct participation of parents, who are trained during parent and child weekly visits to a speech language pathologist. In the first stage of the program, the clinician demonstrates the therapy to the parent, observes the parent conduct therapy and provides feedback and goals for the following week until the next clinic visit. The clinician guides the parent to provide three types of verbal "reinforcement" contingencies for the child's stutter free speech. These include, acknowledgment, praise and request for self-evaluation, where the child is asked to recognize his or her stutter free speech. If unambiguous stuttering occurs, the parent provides two types of verbal "punishment" contingencies including acknowledgment of the stuttering and request for self-correction, where the child is asked to repeat the stuttered word again. These contingencies are administered by parents in everyday speaking conversations, in order to promote generalization of fluent speech. When the child's stuttering is reduced to near-zero levels, the child then enters the second stage of the program, where the number of clinic visits are gradually phased out from bi-monthly to monthly to every 2 months, and so on, as required by the child. The purpose of the stage 2 visits is for the speech language pathologist to evaluate the child's speech and to ensure that near-zero stuttering levels are maintained.