My husband and I missed some signs of selective mutism in my son or wrote them off as other issues. These are the signs that we missed and what eventually got us to the idea of selective mutism. Every kid is different. Someone else with selective mutism will have different characteristics that cause you to look into an evaluation.
I didn’t initially think of selective mutism and honestly didn’t really know much about it other than having heard about it through the character Raj on the Big Bang Theory.
Developmental delays
My son experienced some speech development delays due to hearing issues early on. We got involved with speech therapy from 18 months because he was diagnosed with a speech delay. Hearing problems since birth caused the speech delay. We lowered our expectations of his speaking because of the delay. Any speech at that point was celebrated!
He got tubes in his ears and his hearing improved. Speech therapy caused his language to explode. He graduated from speech therapy at age 2.5 speaking full sentences.
Assuming Shyness
His brother was born around the same time. He spent more time with extended family as a result of visitors coming to help with our expanded family. When extended family would visit he would not talk to them and would only talk to my husband and me.
I have a social anxiety diagnosis. People told me all the time that I am shy, especially as a child. I assumed that since he has some of my genes that he was probably also a shy kid. He was also going through a major life change of having a brother so my husband and I just continued to note it but didn’t pursue anything for a few months.
Missed Signs
I imagine that I am not the only parent that has written off a child not speaking as shyness. I knew that he was not speaking to extended family or strangers but there were definitely some other signs that I missed or didn’t quite put together at first.
My son has always been a daycare kid. He had a favorite teacher that had been with him since before he started talking and he did talk to her. He would often talk to the other teacher in the classroom but if a teacher from another room said hi to him he typically wouldn’t respond. We would chat with the director from time to time and she would mention that he doesn’t talk to her so if she is trying to get an update of how he is doing she would have to ask the long term teacher. All of this we just assumed again was shyness and these were adults that weren’t as familiar to him so he would naturally talk less.
The kids in his class were the other sign. He only talked to a few of them. He had 2-3 that were his favorites and he seemed like he was verbal with them based on the reports we would hear from his teachers. We began to hear more reports of hitting between the ages of 2.5-3 years. We would work on teaching him at home to use his words instead of hitting but it kept happening. After talking with him about it many times he mentioned that his class was loud. We thought the hitting behavior was due to sensory overwhelm (which probably did play a part too) and never thought that anxiety could have been the reason that he was hitting instead of using his words.
The Sign that Wasn’t Missed
Because of the overwhelm and behavior at his daycare, we looked into getting him into a different daycare. We found an in-home daycare that we really liked that only had 8 kids which was half the size of the classroom he was in at his previous daycare. We made the switch for him and after the first few weeks, he built a comfort level there but did not say a word to any of the kids or the two teachers.
Share in the comments below. What made you realize your child might have selective mutism? Were there any signs that you missed originally or assumed were something else?