Helping Your Child With Selective Mutism
On sale
18th August 2005
Price: £18.99
Genre
Health & Personal Development / Family & Health / Advice On Parenting / Child Care & Upbringing
Selected:
Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781572244160
Often described as ‘social phobia’s cousin’ and misdiagnosed as autism, selective mutism is a debilitating fear of speaking in some situations experienced by some children. The disorder usually presents in children before the age of five, but it may not be recognized until the child starts school. When requested to speak, children with selective mutism often look down, blush, or otherwise express anxiety that disrupts their engagement with people and activities. Selective mutism is related to social anxiety and social phobia, and more than 90 percent of children with selective mutism also manifest symptoms of one of these problems.
This book is the first available for parents of children with selective mutism. It offers a broad overview of the condition and reviews the diagnostic criteria for the disorder. The book details a plan you can use to coordinate professional treatment of your child’s disorder. It also explains the steps you can take on your own to encourage your child to speak comfortably in school and in his or her peer group. All of the book’s strategies employ a gradual, ‘stepladder’ approach. The techniques gently encourage children to speak more, while at the same time helping them feel safe and supported.
This book is the first available for parents of children with selective mutism. It offers a broad overview of the condition and reviews the diagnostic criteria for the disorder. The book details a plan you can use to coordinate professional treatment of your child’s disorder. It also explains the steps you can take on your own to encourage your child to speak comfortably in school and in his or her peer group. All of the book’s strategies employ a gradual, ‘stepladder’ approach. The techniques gently encourage children to speak more, while at the same time helping them feel safe and supported.
Reviews
Taking their school-based approach and adapting it for use by parents, the authors enlarge the audience who can benefit from their sound intervention program. The program is well-organized and employs graduated and systematic strategies that are both reasoned and researched. Building on established principles of learning, the program thoughtfully guides parents in how to teach, shape, and practice a step-by-step method for youth to overcome the fear of speaking. A welcomed addition to the literature that strives to reduce anxiety in youth, I encourage parents to read and apply the program.
Silence, indeed, is not always golden. Helping Your Child with Selective Mutism is a must-read for parents, educators, clinicians, and developmental researchers. McHolm and her colleagues have provided a scholarly, lucid, and practical account of how to understand and manage the child with selective mutism. The authors’ step-by-step program will help even the most silent child.
This is, without exception, the best book for parents on the topic of selective mutism I have had the pleasure to read. Loaded with information on the nature and causes of this childhood condition and filled with practical advice on how to cope with and effectively treat it, this book provides parents with a highly useful, trustworthy, science-based program for the child with selective mutism. Few if any professionals have more clinical experience with such children and the treatment of their condition than do McHolm and Cunningham. My congratulations both to the authors for putting together such a finely crafted book and to you, the reader, for having the good sense to buy it.