Anyone else had a DC that won’t talk to adults?

[PurpleRiverIsland]

DC (age 6)won’t talk to adults unless he knows them very very well. He’ll talk to adults in the family only (mummy, daddy, grandparents, uncles and aunties). He won’t talk to his teacher unless she asks him a direct question. He won’t talk to neighbours at all. Not even hello goodbye yes or no or a wave, even if they talk to him directly. Same with previous teachers or headteacher or any adult who he would know but non family. It comes across as very rude when he won’t say hello or goodbye even if they talk to him directly. I’ve told him he can wave if he doesn’t want to actually talk at least that shows some acknowledgement but he won’t do that either. He is very chatty and sociable when playing with children and within our family. Has anyone else had this? My concern is firstly it comes across very rude, secondly if he needs something he doesn’t ask a teacher or adult for it. Any ideas what might help him develop this skill a bit?

Mine are the same and my concerns are the same as yours 😞 hope someone else has some advice

Mine the same very quiet out house at just turned 9. But doesn't shut up in house or with family members

Maybe it’s not that unusual then but I was a bit surprised when his new teacher told me he still hadn’t spoken to her at the end of the first term. We managed to get him to wave or say hello/bye at one stage but he seems to have regressed back. I wonder if not seeing anyone in lockdown has had an impact

My now 16 year old was exactly the same.

When we looked around infant schools one head actually asked if he was special needs as he wouldn't say anything.

He got better with age, year on year. He is just shy and will always be more reserved than son 2 who literally speaks to anyone who will listen.

I also used to panic that other adults must find him rude but looking back it was just a phase and phases do pass.

Easy now to say but rest assured it does pass.

I have an 11 year old like this and I would say he suffers from social anxiety. I'm hoping he will grow out of it

Mine are both like this. DD now almost 11 and will sometimes be very pleased with herself for speaking in a shop or ordering a drink. I haven’t pushed it although I expect them to look at their childminder and say hello and goodbye. They stay on the edges around groups of children, which makes me sad but it shouldn’t.
DD, as I said, is getting more relaxed sometimes. She sat with my friend and me the other day and joined in a conversation. I think they both feel very much that they are ‘shy’ (I don’t use that word with them) so there’s no point making them feel worse. Just opportunities and modelling.
However, I think it’s worth keeping a close eye on and if DD wasn’t making her own progress I would be thinking differently.

My 3 year old is like this. Our nursery suggested we contact our local speech therapists and they suspect he's displaying signs of selective mutism. Basically he has a deep fear or speaking to certain people. He is fine and chatty around us and adults he knows, but send him to nursery and the best they get is whispers.

We are starting support with speech therapist and hopefully that will help him.

Interesting that you mention your now 11 year old will order from a menu as that is when we had a breakthrough.

He has got better as the years go by.

Chatty son no 2 had speech therapy as couldn't pronounce the letter S. Didn't stop him talking mind you !

Children - they are such a worry.

I sounded really confident about it in my last post, but so often worry that I could have done more. I was a socially anxious child and still prefer small groups or 1:1. I do happily speak publicly for work though.
I sometimes wonder if I should ‘encourage’ the DC to join in more - but I remember how hard that used to be when my mum did it with me, feeling like a failure and still being anxious.
I have noticed that DD notices when I’m ‘sociable’ - I chatted to an elderly man in a cafe who wanted to tell me about his Air Force experiences. She was clearly impressed afterwards and told me how nice I was!
They both seem like outsiders in new groups - my nieces and nephews make crowds of friends wherever they go, but mine just don’t.
They are nice kids! I think!
I am going to put a bit more effort into the modelling I think. It’s maybe a combination of personality, opportunity and practice.

I always made this a thing from a young age. That they have to say hi and bye and answer quedtions. My 4yo likes not speaking to people but he knows he has to be polite or he will get a stern look, so he is. We also encourage them to order food, state preferences (eg in shoe shop) directly to the person, not to me.

I think it is important and is something you should work on

Good luck!

Hopefully it’s a phase. Dd1 used to hide behind parked cars to avoid a simple hello to perfectly friends neighbors/ friends parents etc. Grew out of it now very polite 14 year old

From about 8 months Dd has been shy (shes 3.5 now) and it does take her a while to warm up to people. She used to scream when she had to go to her dads!

She’s chatty and loud at nursery, and with anyone she knows. But if someone has the audacity to say hello to her in a shop she’ll hide her face. It is getting slightly better as she gets older, and I try to model chatty behaviour to her. Often when we leave a shop she’ll ask why I spoke to that person, and I explain it’s polite to reply when someone says hello.

I’m hoping it’s something she’ll grow out of as she gains more confidence, but I’m not going to force it, I used to despise my mum forcing me to talk to people I didn’t want to. Maybe kids are a better judge of character?

My friend's DD had selective mutism in reception- chattered away at home but never said a word at school. She got over it gradually and is fine as a 12yo.

My DD was like this as a young child. Very shy, didn't like adults near her-would scream if anyone touched her. She wouldn't shut up at home! Once she eventually became happy with one teacher she would chat to her, but it took quite a while.

The teachers in reception used to tell me they had to smile every week when, after martial arts lessons in school, when every other child queued up to shake hands with the teacher on the way out, my DD would queue up then politely say 'no thank you' when it was her turn!

She is now a 13 year old, very confident young woman. She still doesn't shut up at home and is confident to hold her own in all sorts of conversations /debates with any adult. She's very mature for her age too.

When she was very little she was just shy and that's fair enough. One think I did do is be careful not to label her as that though, as I didn't want her to use it to hide behind as an excuse never to answer someone!

There is nothing wrong with being quiet or a sensitive soul. Embrace his gorgeous personality, he may be quiet and contemplative all his life or he could just not yet be ready to blossom with the outside world.

My sister was like this and my parents were quite worried. We laugh as her job now involves her socialising directly with the wealthiest people in England, Hollywood A listers, top politicians and royalty 😁

This is most likely Selective Mutism. My son is 4 and he got diagnosed by a specialist last year. He is exactly the same as yours. Very chatty around family/ friends but refuse to talk to teachers or neighbors. Unfortunately there’s no cure but do let the school know about the issue. We got special help from Senco so he can have extra help and teachers all understand that it’s due to his anxiety not because he’s rude.

My autistic DD. When she was 3/4/5 we visited my family every Saturday and she would sit there and not say a word, for hours. She wasn't non verbal, just selective, and even now years later she won't talk to people she doesn't know unless in a professional capacity, and even then it's limited. She wasn't diagnosed autistic until she was 9, so we really didn't know why she did it back then.

This sounds like me when I was a child and now in some respects -pushing on 40!
For me, I would speak to family at home as normal but anyone else, apart from a select few friends, I would sit and smile and only answer yes or no to any questions and if any conversation wasn’t directed directly to me I would not join in the conversation.
My experience of it was that I would blush whenever I spoke to anyone and I hated it so I would just not say anything to avoid my face going red and the comments that went with it from other kids. When it did happen my heart would start beating fast and I couldn’t think straight so my mind would go blank and even if I wanted to join in conversation I couldn’t as all I could think what to say. Now I’m much better than I was but I have to try and think about conversations I may have and think about what I can talk to individual people about. At school I remember teachers trying to help me by saying they want me to answer one question a week in front of the class, one teacher used to give me the answers to certain questions quietly and then ask me to put my hand up when he asked the question which helped me to get a little bit of confidence. To be honest I don’t know what the answer is as sometimes I still struggle so I will be following with interest.

I knew twins like this, diagnosed with selective mutism.

They had their own language when young, and were still using that between themselves when they started school, but were talking to family by then. Took until the middle of Y1 for them to begin to answer the register on school and talk to other children (but no adults outside close family), then their parents decided to move their school.

They came to us and reverted to total mutism outside their home. Two terms in, they began talking to one child, who would relay requests for them to other children and to staff.

Their parents said they never stopped talking at home but we literally never saw it - they did not talk to their parents while any of us were present.

However, apart from not speaking, they took full part in classroom and school life. They joined clubs, put their hand up in class, would bring their work for marking etc. I had them in gym club in Y3 - by then, one of them would nod or shake her head in answer to a yes/ no question, so I always knew which one was which (important for safety).

They were very bright, so we knew they could read because they would write in response (they wouldn't write in answer to a question, but did all their school work, so we could check understanding through that). I also checked by reading their book aloud with errors ( as I have done in the past for children unable to communicate with speech) and eventually they would point to a word I had missed or misread).

In Y6, they took starring speaking roles in the school production (both really funny, and excellent at playing the audience), and now run a very popular cafe, freely chatting to customers.

Over KS2, they began to talk more to more children, then to one TA, then answered the register, then answered a direct yes/ no question from their teacher. Painfully slow for us, but they more than got there in the end, in their own time.

The parents said they loved school, and chatted about it at home. Everything I have read says it is a form of social anxiety, but it always seemed strange that there were no other signs of anxiety at all. They were cheerful, happy, engaged, but silent children, and are now exactly the same as adults - but not silent!

PS. It may be obvious from my post, but the twins were absolutely identical, so we did really struggle when we first had them as they would not tell us which one they were.

My daughter is 4 and nursery said selective mutism too. They were going to get her assessed but ww didn't in the end. She is good at working around it. She will whisper to one trusted person.
For her it's not just adults though. She can't make friends as she says she's too shy to talk to anyone.

My sister was like this, probably til she was about 10.

She's actually not really anxious or shy and is quite an extrovert as a teen/adult!

My DD is 6 and can be very, very shy before she’s comfortable with people. She does talk to teachers at school now but it took a good while! She spoke to the hairdresser today for the first time ever, and more than once, and we were so pleased! She’s definitely growing in confidence.

We noticed a huge uptick in her willingness to speak after we’d found out she had moderate hearing loss from glue ear though, and had some treatment! We think perhaps she just wasn’t hearing people properly and, as a naturally shy and polite little thing, she was too nervous to say anything wrong so she just wouldn’t speak at all.

Might be worth a hearing check just in case.

My 10 year old is like this. She is aware that she doesn't talk to adults, or in fact a lot of children. She never speaks to a new teacher til about Christmas.

It's an anxiety thing, although they don't always realise that's why they aren't talking. Last time we went to the opticians it was awful, she sat absolutely still and wouldn't answer any of the questions about her eyesight, which made the whole thing pointless. The minute we got out of the door she said "the letters were ... The circles were better on the red side and the numbers did ... " She described it as the words getting stuck in her throat, she wants to speak but gets too nervous to get the words out.

I'm on a FB group called SMIRA, for parents of children with selective mutism. That's what dd has, although she's never officially been diagnosed with it. It can be difficult to get help in some parts of the country as speech therapy and cahms argue about who is responsible for treating selective mutism. I've had some amazing advice from that FB group though, so it might be worth joining to see if you think your ds fits the profile.

Deffo sounds like selective mutism. My cousin has this literally will not say a word to adults apart from mum and her grandparents. Doesn’t even speak to her dad (he wasn’t involved for first few years of her life) but she is completely fine and talks to children no problem. None of her teachers have heard her speak and she is getting help from speech therapists who go into her class sometimes now. She is 10 now.