Hello. I am a kindergarten teacher and I have a student in my class who is "selectively mute". I have never had a student with this disorder before and I am trying to find resources for the parents of this child. Does anyone out there have a child with selective mutism and what have you been doing to help your child deal with or overcome this problem?
Hi P.,
L. your name as it's also my daughter's name.:) I had never heard of selective mutism until reading your request so I Googled it and found a couple sites that look promising. Here they are:
www.acposb.on.ca/mutism.html
www.SelectiveMutismCenter.org
L.
Hi P.
Can you define "mute"? Sometimes mute is a way of saying someone is deaf or it can mean that a child is considerably shy.
I am currently attending ARC for sign language. Once I graduate, I plan on working with deaf or hard of hearing students in my school district. In the mean time I teach parents and children (any age) how to sign. If this sounds like something you are interested in, please get back to me and we can talk more about my program.
____@____.com
P.:
I just watched a 20/20 episode from Friday that was on this exact topic. Also one of the children was featured in a People magazine article about 2-3 weeks ago. The children worked with a special therapist who worked with them slowly to just use simple sounds to communicate like "yuh" for yes and "nnnnn" for no. This made it not so stressful on the child to try to talk. Turns out it is anxiety related so pushing them to talk makes them even more anxious. Both of the kids featured in the story were doing much better with the special therapist. You and/or the parents should get a copy of the 20/20 story (normally you can order copies of episodes from a new magazine's website) - I don't remember where the therapist was. Good luck!
Our 3 1/2 year old is selectively mute and we are just starting to learn about it. There is a website "selectivemutism.org" with multiple resources and recommended reading: http://www.selectivemutism.org/resources
We are starting with one on one playdates at our home (familiar environment) with classmates and perhaps having the teacher at our home as well. Carpooling with one other student supposedly helps. If you have success with your student we will be interested to hear how it goes.
Thanks.
There was a story on either Dateline or 20/20 over the weekend about selective mutism. Can't remember which one, but if you google it online, you should be able to find out which and get some resources from their story to help the parents. It was very incouraging. There was a girl on the show that was probably about 8 or 9 that had been cured through therapy sessions starting with making her comfortable to make short sounds that evolved to complete words, now she is just fine. Really a positive story. Good luck!
