Electic Mutism

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My younger brother restricted his conversation to 4 people (our parents, me and my other brother) until he was 10. He never said a word to anybody else. He saw a child psychiatrist once a month for 5 years - and never said a word to her!

He had no problem talking to us in the presence of other people - but if they spoke to him he'd just stare at them till they looked away.

When he was 10 he went to a boarding school for "special children" (children of very high IQ). He still didn't talk - so they put him on trial! The whole school gathered. There was a judge, a jury, prosecution and defence. The charge was "refusing to talk". The jury found him "not guilty" - if he didn't want to talk he didn't have to.

The next day he decided to talk.

I recently asked him about the psychiatrist. He grinned and said:

"It was an interesting battle of wills."

cool, it must have been hard to know what he was thinking all the time.

aaaagrh! it's so frustrating, working with elective mutes, speaking as a teacher. whilst i want to respect their choice, it makes life very difficult. i taught a very young kiddie (5 or 6) the other day who is an elective mute, and was supposed to be assessing her science knowledge. she wrote her answers and then illustrated them. unfortunately, neither the writing nor the drawings told me much - perfectly understandable, at that age. made life very difficult - did she know her stuff or not? and she's a lovely kiddie, too. at the end of about 2 hours, she mouthed "thank you" for something. i felt like i'd climbed Everest (yep - that sort of achievement is partly why i do the wretched job).

what worries me is that she can't be assessed properly, and so may come out withlower grades thanshe possibly derserves. what to do?

Heeheehee....I was fairly mute until I was 4. It's why my orignal dx was LFA, because I had nothing much to say I guess.

My son was dx'd with elective mutism. He doesn't have a problem talking to us.