What to do when your child won't speak
At first these parents thought their children's reluctance was simple shyness. But they soon learned that dealing with selective mutism is never simple
Julia Hudson’s* son Tyler was a chatty preschooler. But at 2½, the Hamilton boy changed. “As soon as we left the house, he’d stop talking,” says Tyler’s mom. “At the grocery store, he’d turn his head and stay silent if I or anyone asked him a question.” Normally a chatterbox with his grandparents, Tyler also stopped speaking to them.
“I thought it was just a phase,” says Hudson. “We probably let it go on too long — for about a year.” On a school visit before junior kindergarten, Hudson read an information sheet about typical developmental milestones. “He was on target for everything, but he still wasn’t speaking outside the house.” So she contacted the school board to ask where she could get help for her son. She was given the contact information for Angela McHolm, a child psychologist specializing in selective mutism (SM) at the Centre for Psychological Services at the University of Guelph (Ontario) and also at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton.
When Hudson described her son, McHolm agreed it sounded like SM, an anxiety-based condition. “It’s an excessive fear of being heard or seen speaking in select situations,” explains McHolm. “It develops most commonly in the early school years — a time when other common phobias, such as a fear of the dark, emerge.”
“I started watching my son and could plainly see it was a fear reaction,” says Hudson. “His eyes would widen and he’d step back. We felt guilty and angry with ourselves because we had been pushing him to speak. It was the exact wrong thing to do.”
All kids with SM feel less comfortable speaking in various situations, says McHolm. But where and how they speak varies from child to child. “Some kids with SM speak everywhere, but the quality of their speech varies. They may use fewer words, speak softly or only whisper. Typically, these kids speak more freely at home with immediate family and are less comfortable speaking at school.”
Says Carrie Moore* of Thornhill, Ont., about her son Joshua (then three): “We’d be chatting in public and if someone walked by, he’d stop talking mid-sentence — like turning off a switch. When he was four, he’d cover his mouth if something was funny so people wouldn’t see him smiling, and he still does this sometimes (at eight).” Although he never sang at school, he belted out all the school songs at home. “Teachers thought he hated music or just wasn’t paying attention.”
Like Joshua, many kids with SM are misunderstood. “Some are seen as being oppositional or defiant,” says McHolm. “But really the child can’t speak because he’s paralyzed by intense anxiety.” Children with selective mutism might have toileting accidents because they don’t want to attract attention by visiting the washroom.
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