Suspected mutism in my 5 year old

[Floam6]

My 5 year old is in year 1 at school and despite being very confident, loud and happy at home, she will not talk in class at all. She is one of the youngest in the class and also slightly behind which seems to not be helped by the fact her teacher and the support teacher are struggling to get her to join in and speak up. They have suggested she may have selected mutism and have asked if they can seek outside help as her teacher doesn’t have much experience with it. However this may take a long time given waiting lists and I feel really worried about her falling more behind, and also about whether we as her parents are doing enough to support her and handling it the right way. Her attention span also isn’t great which school have also flagged, and I wonder if she may have ADHD for example, although school haven’t suggested it yet. Does anyone have any similar experience or any ideas of ways to support her or encourage her to talk more in class. Strangely she is fine at after school club and happily chats and plays with the staff there, but it is a different story when in class. Thank you.

Hi

My son experiences mutism and has a diagnosis of autism. From advice I have been given is not to put pressure on him to speak. And to give him a little job in the classroom to help him. And to be low key when talking does hapoen x

Thank you @Lizziewest88I really appreciate your response and advice.

No experience of selective mutism but the first thing I would do is to ask for a referral to SaLT and a hearing test, just to rule out the possibility that she’s either not hearing enough in the busy classroom environment or she’s not able to fully follow what is being said.

As the PP suggests, selective mutism is often associated with ASD so it’s probably worth filling in this assessment abd seeing how she scores