Selective Mutism

First off, Happy Halloween, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday to the wife, Happy Birthday to my mom, Merry Christmas, and while we’re at it, we might as well throw in Happy New Year, and Happy Chinese New Year, just in case. It’s definitely been awhile.

I thought I’d use this post to reflect back on how Caitlyn has been doing these past few months. As many of you know, Caitlyn is an extremely shy child who has issues in social surroundings. We pretty much knew this within her first year. We thought consistent socialization would help, so we started sending her to nursery school at age 2 and then to another one when she was 3. At both places, she rarely uttered a word, and she would usually not interact with the other children. Her teachers thought her to be a bit off, but we knew there was nothing wrong with Caitlyn because she would run her mouth nonstop when at home. We just figured she had anxiety issues and would eventually grow out of them.

This year, she started at her newest school, and for the first few months, things were pretty much the same as before. She wouldn’t speak to her teachers or classmates, and she’d always be at the outer edge of the group, watching and observing what others were doing. Her classmates would even ask the teachers if Caitlyn spoke and any sort of sound coming out of her mouth would elicit a gasp of astonishment from the other kids. The wife and I still stuck to our guns that she would grow out of this, but that confidence was slowly slipping away and at what point do you say that more than enough time has passed?

I began to do some research into social anxiety issues and stumbled across something called selective mutism. Selective mutism is a childhood anxiety disorder characterized by a child’s inability to speak in social settings, like school. However, they are able to speak and communicate in settings where they are comfortable, secure, and relaxed. This is different from being shy because children that are shy usually come out of their shell within a month or so after becoming familiar with a person or environment. They’re able to respond to questions, even though it may be in just a whisper. Children with selective mutism are not able to respond at all. Other symptoms include social isolation and withdrawal, difficulty maintaining eye contact, blank expressions, reluctance to smile, and stiff and awkward movements.

However, it’s not all gloom and doom. Children with selective mutism usually have above-average intelligence and perception, creativity, a love for art or music, empathy, and a strong sense of right and wrong.

Reading about selective mutism reminded me of a student that I taught a few years ago when she was in middle school. She refused to speak in class even when she knew her grade depended on it. You could have probably threatened to dunk her into a vat of boiling acid with 30-foot alligators inside, and she still wouldn’t have said a peep. She wouldn’t talk to her classmates either. But the counselor did say that she would talk at home.

All of these descriptions seemed to fit Caitlyn. She’s able to speak to people she’s familiar with, basically family members or close friends, but with other people, you’d have better luck winning the lottery than getting her to speak. I even asked her current teacher, and she agreed that these characteristics described Caitlyn spot on. It was almost a relief to finally put a name to what was wrong with my child.

However, the bad thing with selective mutism is that it does not necessarily improve with age or time. If it’s not addressed, selective mutism tends to be self-reinforcing. If people don’t expect you to talk, they eventually start ignoring you and stop addressing you completely. On the other hand, putting too much pressure on getting a child to speak may make them become even more anxious. Having the child in a supportive environment is the first step in the right direction.

Thankfully, Caitlyn has two wonderful teachers that care a great deal about her and are willing to work patiently with her. They give her space, but also give her lots of positive reinforcement and encouragement. Slowly but surely, Caitlyn has begun speaking to her teachers and classmates. She began with super quiet whispers while avoiding eye contact and how now progressed to speaking in an audible tone with eye contact. She’s also happily interacting and speaking with her classmates. Heck, she even screams out “Good morning” and “Good night” to the security guard of our apartment now. These things would have been unfathomable just a short two months ago.

Her anxiety issues aren’t exactly cured and I’m sure this will be a struggle of hers in the foreseeable future, but she’s headed in the right direction, and for that, I’m grateful. To me, it's the best Christmas present I could have asked for this year!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a Good (Fri)Day

Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God
I don't know but today seems kinda odd…

But it wasn’t odd because the dogs weren’t barking or because there wasn’t any smog, or even because Momma cooked breakfast with no hog. No sir, Mr. Ice Cube, the reason today (or rather the last two Fridays) seemed odd was because I didn’t hear any crying at all coming from Caitlyn as we got ready for school.

That’s right folks! I was finally able to snap those back-to-school photos! And they were only a week late. And here I was foolishly thinking that it would take over a month. Granted she’s cried on all the other days, but they were only for very short periods of time. We’re slowly, but surely getting there.

Now that we’ve gotten the tears and picture taking out of the way, we can move on to other matters of importance, such as speaking up in class. They had open house this past Saturday at Caitlyn’s school. Her English teacher says she has yet to hear a peep come out of her mouth. Like I said, slowly but surely we’ll get there.

I wonder what her first words to her teacher will be. Reminds me of the joke about the kid who didn’t speak for years until one day, he said, “Pass the salt, please.” And when the dad asks how come the kid hadn’t spoken before that moment, he answered that there hadn’t been a need to speak up until now. I can picture Caitlyn’s first words to her teacher being something akin to that.

 

 

 

 

 

Back to School

So I’ve been seeing a lot of first day back-to-school photos people have been posting online. In all of them, the children have on happy, excited faces. Caitlyn’s first day of school officially began this past Monday. Before that, she also attended two weeks of summer camp/school at the new kindergarten she is going to in preparation for the big day. Unfortunately, there are no happy, smiling pictures of her that I can post online of her yet, and I’m sure you can probably figure out why.

Caitlyn will be attending the kindergarten school branch of the school I teach at, so it’ll be convenient for me to drop her off before I head to work. Of course, with anything good, there has to be some sort of downside. And for us, it’ll be waking her up at 6:30 in the morning.

The wife is rather concerned about this. 4-year-olds need roughly 11-13 hours of sleep for proper development. Therefore, Caitlyn’s normal bedtime of 10 pm isn’t going to cut it. We’ve been getting her into bed around 8:30 these days, but after story time and rolling around the bed for awhile, it’s still close to 10 before she actually goes to sleep. A tired, grumpy kid is not ideal when you’re trying to convince them that going to school is a fun thing.

I usually begin the day by pulling up the blinds and noisily opening and closing the closet doors and drawers to wake her up in the morning. Wheee! What a fun way to start the day! This reminds me of the cruel and unusual punishment my mom used to put me and my sister through when we were kids. On weekends, to make sure we wouldn’t sleep in late, she’d blast classical music on the speaker system in the house and would only turn it off when we would wake up. No surprise that classical music is not my thing now.

Anyway, Caitlyn will eventually wake up crying about how she doesn’t want to go to school. This continues on through breakfast, changing clothes, and the brushing of teeth. Then the pace picks up when Caitlyn realizes that the time has come for us to leave.  She runs, I chase, I grab, and out the door we go. In the car, there are more tears and pleading until we get to school. That was pretty much our morning routine the first week.

The good news was that she would be all smiles when I’d pick her up at the end of the day. She’d say how she liked going to school and talk about all the fun activities they did. She even made a good friend that first week! It’s just unfortunate that she fails to remember the good times when she wakes up the next morning.

The second week of summer school was insurmountably better. Less tears and whining in the morning, no chasing around the house, and by the time we’d reach the car, she would be fine. Of course, the one day where she was near perfect also happened to be the last day of summer school.

Then came two weeks of vacation before the start of school, which meant we were back to square one this past Monday. I’m assuming the school purposely did this on purpose to amuse themselves. But we weathered the storm, and Caitlyn is slowly getting back into the swing of things again. Time will only tell when I can snap a photo of her in her school get-up with no tears in the morning. Hopefully sooner than later. And then there's also that issue of trying to make her fall asleep sooner. A nip of whiskey, perhaps?

 

Summer Days

With summer in full swing, we've been trying to keep Caitlyn as busy as possible. Much of it involved signing her up for various classes. These included: ballet, kung fu, and drawing.

Thankfully, after two classes, she's shown no interest in ballet. (I fail to see how doing a pirouette will help her in life.) Only drawback is we already paid for the ballet outfit. But now I guess we know what she can go as for Halloween.

She's always liked drawing, so drawing class seemed like a natural fit for Caitlyn. And she didn't disappoint with her artwork. I've already got two of them mounted and proudly hanging up in our house!

You can add Caitlyn to that list of people who love kung fu fighting. Her kicks are definitely fast as lightning. Out of all three classes that she took this summer, kung fu has been her favorite. She practices her moves at home and quotes kung fu philosophy and poetry. The primary reason is her teacher. He's great with young kids, is funny, and makes everything fun. 

Caitlyn is normally very shy with strangers, and it takes a long time to warm up to people, so to see him able to bring her out of her shell, yelling, chanting, kicking, and punching alongside the other kids is very exciting. I've been telling the wife all along that martial arts will help boost Caitlyn's confidence, and I wasn't wrong - naturally. You are seeing the next Cynthia Rothrock in the making!