When her daughter was three years old, one of the nursery workers pulled Liv aside for a chat. “She told me she had bitten one of her little friends,” remembers Liv. “It was so out of character I asked for a meeting with the manager and explained she had never displayed behaviour like that before.
‘It does tend to happen with children who are non-verbal,’ said the manager. It blew my mind. At home she was verbally advanced.
” By Liv’s own admission her daughter, who turns five this July, was a “pandemic baby” and had little socialisation in her first year. Despite this, she had always spoken. “By one she was connecting words and speaking in full sentences, and by two she was conversing with us,” says Liv.
“By contrast, her younger sister who is now two, is nowhere near as chatty. So when the nursery manager said she was non-verbal, I couldn’t comprehend it. “Then my husband Paul came across an article on mutism, and said, ‘I think she might have this’.
” According to the NHS, selective mutism is an anxiety disorder where a person is unable to speak in certain social situations, such as in school or with people they don’t see often. “It usually begins in early childhood,” says Lindsay Whittington, co-ordinator and founding member of SMiRA , the Selective Mutism Information and Research Association. “Those with selective mutism (SM) speak fluently in some situations but remain consistently silent in others.
They may have a blank expressio.
