Selective Mutism: 4 Ways to Lift Up Your Child

by jphilo | Dec 14, 2021 | Different Dream, Special Needs Parenting

Selective Mutism: 4 Ways to Lift Up Your Child

Selective mutism is a mystery to most of the general public and to many parents. Guest blogger Lisa Pelissier sheds light on the condition in an interview with her daughter and by explaining 4 ways they support her.

She was three when she stopped talking. At first it was just adults. It wasn’t unusual, I thought, for a three-year-old to be shy with adults. But then she refused to talk to her grandmother, someone with whom she had a close relationship. This was troubling, but she was three. Everyone told us she would outgrow it. Lots of kids go through phases when they don’t talk, especially preschoolers. By the time she was five she wouldn’t talk to children outside the family. By the time she was six she wouldn’t talk to her cousins. At seven the list of people grew smaller and she refused to talk out loud to me, her mother, in public.

We knew it wasn’t just a phase. Phases don’t last four years.

What could we do? We had to make her talk.

In desperation I went on social media to ask if anyone I knew had any information about selective mutism. By this time I had a name for it. (God bless the internet!) A friend from my high school youth group responded. She had overcome selective mutism as a child. Her parents had sent her away to a special school for a year and it had worked: she came home talking. There was no way I wanted to send my child away. My friend and I kept talking. One thing led to another and she led me to a counselor who worked with art therapy. And it helped.

Step by step, our daughter recovered her speech. At eleven, she’s not done yet. She still has pockets of people with whom she is silent, people to whom she stopped speaking as a tiny child. But most of the time she speaks normally. To my delight, she agreed to be interviewed for this blog post.

Interview with my daughter:

Q: How does it feel when you talk to people?

A: Uncomfortable. I can’t comfortably speak. Sometimes it could give me more anxiety, like when I try to speak with people I don’t usually talk to.

Q: Did you pick the people you could talk to or not talk to?

A: No

Q: How did you get better?

A: I moved somewhere and new people are easier to talk to because I haven’t known them. It makes me feel weird because they’ve known me not speaking, then suddenly I talk. I don’t like a lot of attention unless I’m really close with them.

Q: Did therapy help?

A: Yes. Especially since I got prizes. It motivated me.

Q: What advice would you give a kid with selective mutism?

A: If I met someone like that I would try to help them by explaining how I got better.

Q: Would you feel sorry for them?

A: Yes, because they can’t talk to people. Life is better because I can talk to people. I’m still working on it though.

Q: How many people do you still have trouble speaking to?

A: I still can’t talk to people who knew me non-talking, like all our friends and family in California where we used to live.

What steps did we take?

Break the tasks into baby steps. Pick one person. Whisper to them. Then, a different day, talk out loud with that person. Get a sticker for each victory. And a reward for a page full of stickers. Person by person, she began to reclaim her voice.
Work on anxiety-reducing techniques: deep breathing, relaxation, visualization.
I’m not sure this is something I’d recommend, but it worked for her… Cash! Grandma paid her to talk to her. Twenty-five cents a word at first, and then twenty-five cents for a sentence. One day she came home with about twenty bucks. It was working. (We’ll work on her mercenary little heart later.)
Go new places where she doesn’t know anyone. We found that in her mind, she had not a list of people she could talk to, but a list of people she couldn’t talk to and places at which she must be silent. People she had never met could not be on a list. She could talk to them, if we reminded her before we went that they weren’t “on the list”.

If this describes your journey, you are not alone. Your child is valuable and precious and they can overcome selective mutism, not to become the person you always wanted them to be, but to become more and more the person God created them to be.

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Lisa Pelissier lives in Oregon where she is a homeschooling mother of four (three with disabilities) and author of three middle-grade fiction novels. Lisa owns SneakerBlossom Books, offering Christian, classical homeschool Study Guides and curriculum. She also works as a freelance copy editor, an artist, and a tutor. In her spare time Lisa enjoys playing the piano and fretting about things over which she has no control. Email Lisa at sneakerblossom@yahoo.com or connect on Facebook.

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Hospital Chaplains: Who Knew They Can Do So Much?

Hospital chaplains provide valuable support when loved ones are dying. Guest blogger Laura Spiegel recently learned they can do much more.

When you think of hospital chaplains, what comes to mind? A bearer of bad news? An imminent turn for the worse? A symbol of death and dying? That’s what I used to think. Chaplains showed up in end-of-life situations, and I never wanted to encounter one.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Last week, I had the privilege of listening to a chaplain at my local children’s hospital as he “demystified” spiritual care and chaplaincy. It turns out that hospital chaplains offer interfaith care, but their role in hospitals is not confined to death and dying. In fact, a big part of the chaplain role is supporting families emotionally as we navigate changes, struggles, or tipping points that occur throughout our lives.

Hospital chaplains help us identify our own resources and strengths so that we can better cope with situations that are causing distress. For some, these situations are indeed life threatening. But for many, they are merely tipping points on a longer journey.

A new diagnosis.
A first hospitalization.
A significant change in treatment plan.

Throughout these tipping points, chaplains can help us explore shifts in identity, roles, and meaning. This often includes grieving the future “story” we’ve envisioned and beginning the process of rewriting a new narrative for our children and our families.

While many chaplains are focused on in-patient hospital encounters, some are expanding their role into outpatient centers. I can’t tell you how excited this makes me!

When my daughter was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis eight years ago, I was shaken to the core. I had naively envisioned a life for my daughter where health could be taken for granted. Where doctor’s appointments were limited to annual check-ups and benign bouts of strep. Where I could swat down stress with the knowledge that this was my second child, and this time around, I knew what I was doing.

With my daughter’s diagnosis, my identity as a woman and mother shifted. My roles as a spouse, daughter, friend, businesswoman, and caregiver collided in messy, unexpected ways. I began to question where I spent my time and with whom I spent it. I mourned the loss of the “future” I had envisioned for my family — and slowly but surely began to write a new one.

Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to partner with care teams that recognize the importance of physical and emotional health. My daughter’s quarterly appointments have allowed the space and time to explore both her and my emotional well-being. But what if a chaplain was included on the care team with the sole role of offering emotional support?

I would latch onto that in a heartbeat.

Our children’s hospital hopes to expand the role of hospital chaplains into more outpatient centers over time. When this resource hits the CF center, I can tell you this: I’m gonna come a-runnin’.

Do you like the idea of a chaplain joining your care team? Ask your doctor how hospital chaplains work in your hospital — and how you can access chaplaincy support!

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email.

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Laura Spiegel spent 12 years at the world’s largest biotech company, partnering with professionals and care teams to help people with special needs and disabilities lead full and happy lives. In 2013 her daughter was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Laura now hosts Paint Her in Color, a website that offers emotional support to parents of children with special medical, developmental, or behavioral health care needs. When she isn’t reading, writing, or soaking up time with her husband and kids, Laura can be reached at Paint Her in Color, by email at laura@paintherincolor.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.