October is selective mutism awareness month.

[HerRoyalRisesAgain]

Selective mutism is a severe anxiety disorder which leaves the sufferer unable to speak in certain situations.

DD is the loudest mute child I know.
She has had SM since she was a baby. At age 2 she would only speak to me. Now at 7 she can speak to all of the family and she's able to speak in school unless it's a substitute teacher. She knows all of the teachers and TAs.

She's gone from silent and tracking behind academically to talkative and perfectly average and in some subjects she's even ahead of what's expected. To say I'm proud of her is an understatement.

We still have work to do, she can't speak to shop keepers, some people in public, bus drivers etc, but she's made such immense progress.

That's great that she's got a helpful / understanding friend 🙂.

@Bobrosspaintbrush

Your DS's reaction sounds very familiar. The thought of having to speak to someone sends DS into a panic. We went into school to talk to the deputy head as DS had been bullied a lot and he suggested DS having a teacher as a mentor. We explained that DS would be very unlikely to speak to them so deputy said "well I'll just call him out of class one day to talk to me about it". We again said that was unlikely to work but that if he really wanted to try, he shouldn't give DS any notice - if told to go out, DS would go with him and, given how much he has improved, DS might manage some yes/no type answers. So what did the deputy do? He went into form time and told DS that he should go and see him the next day during form time. So DS was then refusing to go into school the next day (he was visibly shaking and couldn't sleep the night before) - the only way we got him to go in was by promising to tell the deputy that DS wouldn't be going to see him. The deputy made out that we hadn't told him how bad it was. Inevitably, most people just don't understand.

Can you suggest to DS/the therapist that DS gives her a wave for hello and goodbye? It's still probably outside DS's comfort zone but hopefully only slightly so might work? Baby steps in everything and moving onto next step very slowly has been the only thing that has worked for DS.

@UnfinishedBunting
Thanks for your comment.
I don’t think it is helping, in one breath she tells him it’s ok you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, then in the next breath she is saying she wants him to talk next time.
I can tell she is quite frustrated by him not speaking.
I’m feeling the pressure to try and make him talk.
There has been no suggestion of SM from her and I don’t know much about it either. It was this post that kind of drew my attention to it, and after reading other people’s experiences and further googling that I think my son has SM.

@AliMonkey
Thank you for your comment, it is a horrible situation to be in, but knowing other people have experiences like this is very helpful, and the pressure on me to make him speak has eased a little after reading other posts.

Yes my son was very similar in school. If there was a new teacher in the SN room he would need picking up because of feeling sick, I would pick him up and ask what’s the problem and he would say he was panicking because what if the new teacher tried to talk to him.
He cried for a few days once because they sat a new boy opposite him in the SN room and he said he just sat worrying about what if the boy talks to me.
I took him out of school in the end because his weight plummeted because he can’t eat if he is anxious and I was being called to school 3 or 4 times a day.

I will ask DS if he will be able to manage a wave hello goodbye or some other gesture just so the therapist knows he understands he is listening.
He has never waved goodbye to me or greeted me with a hello ( only if I ask him to)
It’s not something he would do automatically, if you know what I mean.

How's everyone getting on? I'm going round and round about whether getting a diagnosis would help DS, or whether he really is just 'shy' (my friend's description).

@UnfinishedBunting: A diagnosis would be more likely to get you support. Or you could "watch and wait" but still try out some of the techniques that help. I think you said you had the SM Resource Manual, so that gives loads of ideas – if we’d realised it was SM (we probably started to think it might be age 4/5 but didn’t get help until 6/7) then I think DS would have progressed quicker. Sorry if I’ve missed it, but not sure what age your DS is as that probably also makes a difference. I think at eg age 3 it’s probably hard to distinguish between shyness and SM, but by 6 it was very clear for us. If your DS is eg a teenager, then you probably have to give him a choice – although suspect he would be torn between wanting help and being too anxious about getting it (DS would definitely say no).

I got a voicemail from school this week “DS is absent, can we just check he is at home with you”. I immediately imagined him lying in a gutter somewhere, as he’d gone to school as normal, but when I called back they said he’d been there for register but marked absent in periods 1 and 2 –marginally better but I then had visions of him having been beaten up in the toilets or something. Turns out he was in both lessons and answered the register as normal so we think teacher didn’t hear him and for some reason didn’t then look round room for him either. Another peril of an SM child!

@UnfinishedBunting
and OP, thanks, I'll take a look