Recently I discovered a new psychology problem called selective mute. It means that an individual will not speak during certain environment or situation. Selective mute is usually misdiagnoses with the child being shy. It is not really. It is an anxiety disorder. You can do a search in Google for this disorder, it has lots of useful information on it.

Timothy has this problem in school. He didn’t speak in is previous school for 2 years, not a single word to his teachers or friends. Every time I picked him up, he would wait for the teacher to go in and he will speak to me. Once while he was speaking to me, the teacher appeared in his back and he saw, he kept silent. *rolled eyes*. My diagnosis of him having this problem is the teachers were too fierce, not all but some. The turn over was high too. He always didn’t like to go to school and always asking me tomorrow got school or not.

However, he can speak freely in church, with Emily’s babysitter, with my brother or my parents, which he doesn’t always meet. In church, during nursery time, he has no problem speaking to the volunteers taking care of the children.

A month ago, we changed him to another school. He meets the principal who was my church friend. He did speak to her occasionally with 1 or 2 words. It is some progress there. He is still reluctant to speak to his class teacher. However, I hope time will allow him to build his confident and open up to his teacher. If he doesn’t do that, maybe we need to seek professional help. One thing to note is that we cannot pressure him to speak, it can cause more harm than good.

It is very important to check out the school for your children. Some school can give a negative development impact to a child.