Words Waiting Inside: Selective Mutism Family Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe selective mutism, mostly from parents, with teachers, a grandmother, siblings, a foster carer, a speech and language therapist and adults looking back. Many families were told for years that the child was shy, rude, slow to settle, or quiet because of a second language or a move abroad; one boy had a hearing test first. The children speak freely at home and not at school, church, family weddings or shop counters. Places run from Leeds to Harare and Seoul to Bergen. Writers include a night nurse, a joiner, a property agent who watched herself on video, a pharmacist retraining in Toronto and a father who saw his own childhood in his daughter's report. What helped is specific and slow: a teacher who waited, ten minutes in an empty classroom, a ladder of steps on a bedroom wall, notes on the fridge, drawings, walkie-talkies, voice notes before phone calls, a contact book carried between home and school in Osaka, a change of school, therapy, and for one boy medicine after long thought. Some writers now order their own ice cream or have whispered wedding vows. Other children are still silent at school, one girl lost her words when a trusted teacher left, and another's silence followed her home after years of progress.

Who it's for

For parents told their child is just shy, teachers with a silent pupil, grandparents and siblings, and adults who lived through selective mutism and want to see it described.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 283 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.