Parenting The Socially Phobic and Avoidant Adult

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Special Needs Selective Mutism 12 yr Old

A mother describes how her 12-year-old daughter, Jessica, struggled with selective mutism, developmental difficulties, and serious social challenges. Jessica relied on body language instead of speaking, could not be properly assessed academically, shut down during speech therapy, experienced bullying, and directed significant anger toward her mother.

Episode Overview

What This Episode Is About

The parents of “Jessica,” a 12-year-old with selective mutism and significant developmental and social challenges, describe a problem that had persisted for approximately eight years. Jessica communicated with only a small number of people and developed an elaborate system of facial expressions, body language, and whispering to substitute for normal speech. Her mutism made it difficult for educators to accurately evaluate her academic abilities, and she experienced bullying and significant frustration. At home, much of that frustration was directed toward her mother. Her parents discuss changing the patterns that allowed nonverbal communication to replace speech and helping Jessica progressively use her voice in more challenging environments. The results were dramatic: she began speaking normally at school, developed friendships, attended a week-long church retreat, and even read morning announcements independently over the school’s public-address system.

At a Glance

This podcast is best for:

Parents, concerned adults, and professionals supporting adult children who struggle with social anxiety and avoidance.

Episode Details:

min,

sec

March 17, 2025

Full Transcript

This episode's transcript:

[00:00:00]

Okay, thank you for doing this interview. I’m here with Lynette and Jerry from Philadelphia. Now, you have had a very interesting situation with your daughter who has suffered from selective mutism, which would be kind enough to tell the listeners, to describe to the listeners what the situation was when we first met. When we came into therapy, Jess was almost 12 years old. She had been selectively muted for about eight years, and she’d only speak to us at home and her grandparents and a few close friends. In her early years, she developed a system of body language and facial expressions that she used to replace her own voice. And a lot of people got used to this, and just got through school by whispering in her teacher’s ear.

[00:00:57]

So, she would whisper in school? Yes, she would whisper only to the teacher, and it had to be in her ear and she would cup her hand around her mouth so no one could see her lips move. I would imagine that this kind of situation created a number of problems in the school setting. Oh, yes. Well, she couldn’t read out loud in her reading group. And therefore, her teacher wasn’t able to test her IQ verbally, and she couldn’t figure out her reading level. She had a speech therapist that she was working with that she just basically stopped working with her. She just shut down with her, and so the speech sessions were eventually canceled. Because she wouldn’t participate. She just put up a wall of protecting herself, a wall that the teachers couldn’t penetrate. So, I imagine this was causing the parents some stress. It was terrible. She would come home and act up out of frustration, and she’d be screaming, crying, and basically she was taking it out on me. So, I kind of took the brunt of it. How was she doing that? She was basically carrying on any little thing would throw her off or she’d be frustrated. Mostly it would be when bullies were picking on her. There were always bullies in a school or in some environment, and they would be targeting her, and she would come home hysterical crying. It was not a good situation or she’d mouth back to me. Just when she was having a rough day, she would mouth back to me. It was tough.

[00:02:43]

It was a tough situation. So, she was whispering a little to the teachers in school. She wasn’t talking to her classmates. They could not give her appropriate testing because she would not be verbal. What was going on in social scenarios with her peers? Oh, yeah, I became her entertainment guide, the entertainment center here in the, I just had to keep doing things for her to put her in situations where she could be social and try to mingle with kids. That was a tough situation for me because she wasn’t always working with me on that. It was tough. Would she talk to her peers? Only a few. Very few. Only a few close friends would she talk to, and she was comfortable with them. When you found her in an environment of a place setting, say, in McDonald’s, where they were playing in the tubes and jumping around, she would talk to total strange children.

[00:03:39]

She didn’t know them at all, and she felt they were no threat to her. And so, she felt threatened by people that were adults or older children or teachers, people that she felt in her mind could judge the way she sounded or spoke or read. She was felt like she was being judged somehow. And she also felt like she had a man’s voice. I don’t know where that came from, but she’s always felt that. I don’t know where that came from. Now, your daughter has had selective mutism and she also has been in special education. What was the character of her special needs? Why was she in special ed? She has a developmental delay, so reading, math and language skills were always a challenge for her. So, am I correct in understanding that because of the selective mutism, her overall lifestyle and yours as parents, was greatly impacted? Oh, it’s terrible.

[00:04:41]

Yeah. Where are you guys at now with the problem? I would say the selective mutism is just about gone. Sometimes when she feels shy with someone, she’ll whisper a little bit. You know, her voice will get softer, not whisper, but she talks softly, but she talks to just about everybody now. And you told me something the other day that was interesting. What about the loud Speaker in school? Oh, yeah. The teacher told me that Jessica has become her role model for talking on their PA system with reading the morning announcement. She does that by herself in a normal, clear voice. That is- Not prompting before she’s someone who had to hold her hand. She does it all by herself now. They just send her out of the classroom and she walks down to the office and does it herself.

[00:05:33]

So they’re extremely impressed with that. That’s fabulous. Yes, it is. And I would imagine that with the mutism being mostly resolved, your lives as parents are a bit different too. Could you explain how things are different for you? Oh, boy. It’s a lot different because her social life is now starting to take off. She’s opening herself up to friendships where before she couldn’t reach out. So now it’s expanding the people she’s speaking to and now they’re getting to know her. And so she’s finding friendships at church in the teen group. At school she’s talking to everyone now and they’re all getting to know her values. They never knew what they were. And we went- we found the nerve to send her to a camp- church retreat for a whole week this summer and she talked the whole time.

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Jonathan Berent, LCSW

Psychotherapist & Author — Social Anxiety and Performance Anxiety

Jonathan Berent, L.C.S.W., A.C.S.W., is a psychotherapist who has been practicing since 1978. He has created the Berent Treatment Method for Social Anxiety, which is the result of his clinical work with thousands of individuals of all ages with social anxiety since 1978. He has extensive clinical experience with avoidance and dependance personality disorder, and is the author of Work Makes Me Nervous: Overcome Anxiety and Build the Confidence to Succeed (Wiley, 2010), Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties (Simon & Schuster, 1992), and Social Anxiety: The Untold Story, which is a training course for mental health professionals in using the Berent Method to treat social anxiety. (Andrew Kukes Foundation, 2011).

SocialAnxiety.com, has served millions of unique visitors as a multimedia clearinghouse for patients, parents, and fellow mental health professionals in search of articles, educational materials, and books on social anxiety and related subjects. His library of clinical interviews appears to be the most documented clinical success with social anxiety.

Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
40+ years in private practice
Author of "Beyond Shyness" and "Work Makes Me Nervous"
Featured on national television and radio
Specialist in performance and social anxiety

Guest Speaker

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Questions About Social Anxiety Treatment

Can an adult overcome social anxiety after struggling with it since childhood?

Yes. The clinical interviews at www.social-anxiety.com are evidence of this. Long-standing social anxiety and avoidance can become deeply ingrained, but meaningful change is still possible. It takes hard work. When adult children are phobic and avoidant they lack initiative for their mental health. Parents need to learn a therapeutic strategy to compensate for this. Treatment needs to address the individual’s specific patterns of anxiety, avoidance, emotional regulation, dependence, relationships, and functioning rather than assuming that the problem is permanent because it began in childhood.

What role do parents play in treating an avoidant adult child?

Because if they do not learn and implement an empowering game plan the pathology of avoidance-dependence can be permanent. Parents can play an important role because their responses may influence the adult child’s patterns of dependence and avoidance. Learning when to support, when to establish boundaries, when to stop rescuing, and how to encourage greater responsibility is an important part of changing the overall family dynamic.

Can parents unintentionally reinforce avoidance behaviors?

Yes. Parents naturally want to protect their children from emotional pain, but repeatedly accommodating avoidance can unintentionally strengthen it. Providing excessive reassurance, solving every problem, or allowing an adult child to withdraw from responsibilities without a plan for change may reinforce dependence. Learning how to encourage healthy independence is often an important part of the recovery process.

Should I push my socially anxious adult child outside their comfort zone?

Yes, but methodically. Simply forcing an adult child into feared situations can increase conflict and resistance but continually protecting them from discomfort can reinforce avoidance. The goal is to help the person develop the ability to tolerate anxiety and take meaningful steps toward functioning rather than either eliminating all discomfort or demanding immediate independence.

Why would a therapist work with the parents of an adult child with social anxiety?

There are very few therapists who know how to work with parents of socially phobic-avoidant adults given the complexities of the avoidance-dependence stasis. The most noticeable exception to this is the Berent Treatment Methodology. An adult child’s anxiety does not exist entirely in isolation from the family system. Parents may have developed understandable patterns of rescuing, accommodating, protecting, or compensating for the child’s avoidance. Working with parents can help change these patterns and create an environment that better supports treatment, responsibility, and independence.

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You Do Not Have to Manage This Alone

Public speaking anxiety, performance anxiety, and social anxiety respond to treatment. If this episode described your experience, a conversation is the great next step.