My child does not speak, what’s wrong?

As parents, we do our very best to raise excellent children.

The amount of hard work and effort placed into childrearing is akin to putting our funds into long-term investments. We all hope for the best outcome. However, children are powerful beings, filled with curiosity and self-made choices. To say the least, they act out, disagree, follow, and move in their own ways.

It is safe to say that parents are used to all the noise that children produce. However, what happens when they cease to make even so much as a sound? What happens when our questions and comments are simply met with one word, silence? This is where Selective Mutism comes in.

Selective Mutism is primarily a childhood anxiety disorder that gets diagnosed when a child begins to consistently not speak in some situations but speaks comfortably in others instead. The keyword of emphasis is anxiety. It just means that they are triggered by something that overwhelms their ability to talk.

It paralyses their capacity to speak, but it is no more terrible than having a child who fails to talk about something difficult by saying they do not want to. Selective mutism is simply another way to express how much our children are feeling terrified right then. This is important to recognise, so I repeat, our children are showing us how afraid they feel in that moment when they do not speak.

What helps a selectively mute child the best is to have two things: patience and understanding. Use both to be gracious and ask if they need some space away from the situation. Change the pace by switching physical environments so that they can catch a breather. Initiate long hugs that are reasonably tight, or even stroke their back. Get on their eye-level when you do it so that they feel safe around you amidst everything.

There are many other ways to help them, but the two most important elements have now been discussed. For more information around selective mutism in any ages, please reach out to us. We would like to support you.