I want to welcome everybody from wherever you are. And we’re going to do our best to give you a stimulating discussion today. But first I want to introduce my guest, Carla and Kirk Reader. And Kirk was a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, who retired a couple of years ago. And I’d like to start with the question, Kirk. Do you ever get nervous when you’re having to pitch? I got nervous all the time. So it was something that I had to get used to. And it was hard for me at first. But I just kind of took it as I had to do it, and something I had to work myself through. And that’s kind of the thing I try to do with my daughter now with a little bit of your help to relate it in the sports terms.
Because that’s what I feel I’m better at relating to her in. And I’ve had bad games. I’ve had good games. And I think I don’t know of many of the people if they’re sports fans. But I gave up seven runs and got one out in one of my starts as a pitcher. So that’s not very good. And when my daughter has some trouble with something, or I try to relate that back. And you just get back up and go and try and get better and remember what that feeling was like so that you try not to let it happen again. OK, I remember asking you that. You ever have a bad game? And you told me that story. And I said, so how do you deal with it? And you said, well, I have to pitch every fifth game. So what I focus on is what do I have to do to be better next time? Yeah. And I think if anybody has something in their life that you know when you feel good and you know when you feel bad, that you don’t want that feeling again if it’s bad.
And so you try and do everything you can to prevent that from happening again and work hard. And I think it does relate a little bit. Like I said with our daughter, I try and do that if she’s having a hard time. Because I do believe she knows when she’s happy and she knows when she’s sad. And I try and tell her that, hey, if you feel happy one time, remember what you did. And if you feel sad or something happened in between, try and fix your mind to not let that happen again. And the way you said it, it really is the perfect winning psychology when you think of it. And it’s important to ask the question, what would inhibit a person from investing in that psychology, which is so perfect and so simplistic? And the answer is self-esteem, which is not healthy, and too excessive and internal critical scrip, which brings us to the subject of selective mutism.
And I want to start here. I want to continue for a moment. And I just want to give 30 seconds of my resume, because I know that people have a very short attention span. My bio is in depth on the website at socialanxiety.com. But here’s the reality. Since 1978, I have worked with about 10,000 people of all ages who have had social anxiety and countless numbers of individuals who have had selective mutism. So the content that I’m going to share with you comes from that experience and my work since 1978. And by the way, in addition to the people who are sharing tonight, there are lots of interviews, which probably are one of a kind at socialanxiety.com, where you can listen to families and people who have gone through the process and who have resolved the problem. And these interviews are not only testimonials, but if you listen very carefully, you will get insight into the problem and insight as to how it was turned around.
So I’m going to give you a two minute rundown on selective mutism. Then I’m going to turn this over to the quarterback here who is Carla, the wife of the pitcher. Anyway, selective mutism, you all identify it as your kids don’t talk. The not talking is the tip of the iceberg. It was not the iceberg that sank the Titanic. It was everything underneath. So what we’re talking about underneath here is a complex integration of attitude, thinking, emotion, physiology, and family dynamics. And for people who are thinking, hey, my kid just doesn’t talk and I need a little simple trick to turn this around, you’re headed in the wrong direction when you’re thinking like that.
Selective mutism, I don’t think you’re going to hear this anyplace else, but selective mutism is a variation of obsessive compulsive disorder. The obsessing is the conscious and not conscious thinking that the child of whatever age is doing. The compulsion is not to talk. There usually are other compulsions like the disdain that the child of any age here has in talking about feelings. Selective mutism also can be considered an addiction to the avoidance of speaking. And I can assure you that not only is selective mutism symptomatic of a challenged self-esteem. How are you guys there? Hello? I am. Yeah. OK, because I just heard a little weird little thing.
I did too, yeah. OK, well, we’re testing this technology for the first time here, but it is severe social phobia. And for whatever it’s worth, the number one phobia in the universe is fear of public speaking. And selective mutism is certainly a precursor for that problem. Now, the most common question that I am asked is what type of therapy works for selective mutism? The answer is there is no classical type of general therapy that works. You’ve got to work with a therapist that first of all understands what the problem is, and that’s hard to even find. For example, one of my families that I’m working with in Alabama recently went to their pediatrician, and the pediatrician’s response was, I don’t believe there’s anything like selective mutism.
And that kind of response is pervasive. I have met very few pediatricians who understand or know about selective mutism. And the typical thing is, hey, the kid’s just oppositional or whatever, not to mention it is very hard to find any school personnel or therapists who know what the problem is. Now, what I want to do tonight, my primary objective is to give you the basic issues and dynamics about how to turn this around. So the type of therapy is teaching the parents to be the therapists. So I’ve had 50 people say, does play therapy work for the child? Play therapy is a good tool, but the learning curve is going to be just about non-existent in play therapy. You take the typical person with selective mutism to individual therapy, and 99% of the time it’s going to be a waste of time, energy, and money.
Let’s start with diagnostics for a moment. If you know that your child can talk normally at home, but there is a pattern of not talking, not being verbal in specific venues, the most common of which is school, or to specific people, you have selective mutism. There really is no need to go out and spend thousands of dollars on a diagnostic test. It is often important to know if there are underlying issues, any medical, something, any learning disabilities like processing challenges or whatever, but the diagnosis of selective mutism is extremely simple. And the most common thing is, hey, my child is very normal at home, but gee, they just don’t talk in school. Well, you know what? School is the child’s job.
And if you don’t talk in school, it’s a serious problem. And the reason that the kids are not talking in school is because that’s where performance pressure is key word, just like Kirk had to go out and perform and pitch against the Cardinals and lots of other teams. Everybody except my favorite team, which is the Red Sox. Got to have a little sense of humor here. OK, now let’s go through the steps of therapy. And by the way, for the people who are primarily interested in what to do with school, you’re going to have to hang on because I can’t tackle that until we go through some of the basic concepts. So be patient. OK, so the first thing is that the parents have to be realistic and identify a problem. And then they’ve got to get on the same team.
So Carla, I’d like you to talk. Here you go. You’re on the pitch. I’d like you to talk about what was going on when your child was 4, 5, 6, 7, whatever, what you saw, what you were doing, what made you change your attitude, the first steps you took. OK. OK, Hope has always been shy from baby on. And that’s how we labeled it. She’s just shy. Around age four, I guess, three or four when she entered preschool, I as a mother, I knew she was a little bit different. I knew she wasn’t just shy. I could sense it because just in public with anyone, family, anyone, she just would not talk, stone face expression, all of that.
She started preschool and I could just see her with the other kids and how different. She would stand by herself, not talk to anyone. It was really, really hard to watch. But it wasn’t a major concern, I guess, until maybe I kept thinking, well, I’m a stay at home mom. She just gets used to it. She has to get used to being around all the other kids. Well, I guess when she entered kindergarten, kindergarten was a tough year for her. Cried every day. The teacher said she did not speak. She wouldn’t talk at school. I expressed my concerns to Kirk, who probably up until she was around six or seven kept saying, well, I wish I was a kid.
Kirk didn’t talk in school for the first few years. And so I thought, well, I didn’t buy that. I really didn’t think she would grow out of it. And Kirk did seem to believe she would. And then I think it hit him more when she was in first, second grade, ages six and seven. And still, at school events or school parties or anything, you could see the difference. All the kids were running around playing and hope, either set by me or Kirk. Quiet did not say a word. We’d get in the car to go home, and she was her usual chatty self. So it was a problem. So I initiated therapy. We took her to a therapist in nearby St. Louis. And I could tell from the first session, it was hope and I in session with her, that it probably wasn’t going to work.
I felt like I knew more about selecting mutism than the therapist did. I mean, I felt like I was guiding her. But I wanted to give it a chance. So I think we went for five months or so. At that point, I remember feeling desperate. I remember feeling that hope was so different than the other kids. And it hurt me to see her so uncomfortable. I didn’t want her to be the most popular kid or the most. I wanted her to be happy and comfortable. And I could tell she wasn’t. I mean, she was physically rigid. I mean, she would tense up. She would hold her hands in a tense position while in public the whole thing. And it really just hurt me to see that. So I got on the internet and I just looked up, selected mutism, some experts.
And the one I found was Jonathan. OK, now hold on. OK. Now, now. OK, so you come into therapy and. She was at age seven when, yeah, I think she was about seven and a half when we started talking with you. OK. Now, so one of the first things I said is mother and father have to be on the same team. Right. Get it OK, which you guys. Get it. Yeah. OK. I had a good one. And by the way, a couple of people asked me, one person asked me a very good question. What happens if one parent wants to get help and the other parent does not? I will not ever accept working with a family where there is only one parent working, unless it’s a single parent family. Because what that is, is that from the get go is sabotage.
And it’s fragmentation. And what we have to do to turn the situation around is be very impeccably organized and very coordinated. And fragmentation will breed the problem. And what happens usually is when there’s one parent who doesn’t want to get involved, they are illusional or delusional about the child will grow out of the problem, which is the biggest mistake in the world to make. Or they have their own issues and their own anxiety and their own guilt. And they don’t want to deal with it. And by the way, here’s the mind-blowing thing. And I don’t know if you’re aware of this statistic. Six out of 1,000 children have autism. Seven out of 1,000 children have selective mutism. Thank goodness there are so many programs in effect for the autistic community. There is hardly anything worldwide, effectively for selective mutism, which characterizes the confusion and insidious nature of this problem.
OK, so Carla and Kirk come to therapy. And we talk about parents have to be on the same team. And then I introduced the concept of non-enabling. Can you run with that a little bit? Oh, yeah. That’s the biggest thing up until now, even. The non-enabling, he just made us so aware of what we were doing as parents. For instance, we enabled Hope the first seven years of her life. By far, we would speak for her. We would make excuses for her. You name it, just to ease her comfort level. If we were out in public and not even a stranger, I mean, someone she knew could ask her a question. And she would just blank stare at them and not answer.
So Kirk and I would answer for her right away. Or I would say, yeah, she’s tired. You can make up any excuse, any rationalization. And I did it because I just didn’t understand. And I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable. And in reality, it was my own. OK, now, now, OK. This is the key thing here. You did not want her to feel uncomfortable. You wanted to nurture your child. If I say anything wrong, correct me. You were defining nurturing as making your child OK and relieving her from discomfort. Now, probably the most important thing that you could tell the other parents here is what did you have to do emotionally or attitudinally to shift into the belief that the right thing to do was not enabling?
Well, the whole nurturing, I was confusing it with rescuing. I mean, I would rescue her. It was tough at first to not enable. But it’s just awareness. It’s awareness of what you’re doing. And it’s amazing how much you do enable on a daily basis if you’re just conscious of it and aware. Yeah, I mean, I. Can you give an example of discomfort that you yourself as a parent had to work through in the process of learning how not to enable? Oh, my. Well, just the whole, you taught us the approach, freeze the moment, which means if someone did ask a question, and instead of answering right away, I would count to 10 seconds, or I would just stop and look at hope and let her answer.
That was tough. And even when she didn’t answer at first, there were many times that you froze the moment, and she didn’t answer, right? Right. Oh, definitely. OK, can you share how you worked that through in your head? The belief that you were doing the right thing? I knew I was doing it because it all made sense. to me when you explain it. Kids are creatures of habit. I mean, if you’re going to do that and let them, I mean, I taught her that I was going to be there all the time for her. And I thought I was being the best mom in the world doing this. She knew I was going to answer. She knew I was going to be there to make it OK. And it was tough. I felt like she didn’t understand why I was doing it, why I was making her feel uncomfortable.
And it was tough at first, very tough at first to do this, because I knew she didn’t understand. And I’m the type of person and mother that, you know, very nurturing, very want to help, want to do everything for you. And it was hard, not to. But it’s amazing how tough you can get if you know it’s for your child’s well-being. OK, now hold on for a second. You’re doing great, by the way. And I know sometimes I’m asking some hard questions here. But anyway, non-enabling is not just not talking for the child. It is a multi-dimensional concept. What we are talking about here is when parents have to go through the process of literally making a list of overdependence, it’s how does the parent overly think for the child, overly problem-solve?
Read the person’s mind. Here’s a typical example. One kid, six years old, goes to school and the mother says, well, I carry the napsack in every day. Why do you carry the napsack in every day? OK, well, why can’t the child learn how to do that? Or the child, another six, seven-year-old, needs the parents upstairs all the time when she brushes her teeth at night. Why? OK. Enabling is defined as any behavior on the part of the caregivers that inhibits the growth or potential of the child. Now, we aren’t talking about brain potential here. It’s not just an emotional psychological thing. We’re actually getting into brain physiology.
The example that I give of enabling, my wife gave me a great present once. She gave me a sports watch. It’s a really neat watch. But then twice a year, the time changes. And for the life of me, I don’t want to spend 15 minutes going into the manual, racking my brain to figure out how to change this watch. So my stepson comes and does it in three seconds. OK? That’s, I don’t want to access that part of my brain. But when my stepson does it, it’s not enabling because I have my life in order. So when the parents go through the process of non-enabling, not only are we changing the child’s attitude and cognition and emotion, we are literally changing brain physiology. I kid you not. OK. Now, so, Carla and Kirk went through this process. And by the way, it is a methodology, key word.
The worst thing that you could do is get off of this conference tonight and stop talking for your kid across the board. It has to be done methodically, 5% at a time. You need to develop the skills of reading the child’s stress and helping the child process the stress. OK. Now we get into what is probably, once you get past the whole attitudinal, emotional change that you have to do for non-enabling, then we get into what is a tremendously important technique and probably the most difficult of everything. And that is helping the dependent process emotions. In other words, I teach the parents. Remember, the parents of the therapist here. The individual therapist is never going to get to this, believe me.
OK. I teach the parents how to teach the child an emotional vocabulary. In other words, the key here is to attach. To attach and identify to the thinking. To attach and identify to the emotions. And this is what so many parents and professionals don’t want to do. I remember one couple where the therapy didn’t work out and they were quite frankly angry at me with my whole approach. And the father says, I don’t want my child to think that there’s anything wrong with her that she can’t function in society. So therefore, they were never able to teach the child about worry and anxiety and stuff like that. And by the way, when enabling takes place at home, in school, the child is learning a deeper problem.
They are learning a delusion. A delusion means that the child is not in reality. They are learning that the world will adapt to them versus the other way around. That is a terribly profound problem. And the longer it goes, it becomes part of the personality and it is harder to resolve. So, Carla, could you talk a little bit about the process of, as you said, my daughter is the queen of I don’t know. Yes. Just like you just mentioned, attaching an emotion to what she’s feeling and naming it. She, oh boy, yeah, she’s very resistant with this. And now it is getting easier. But in the beginning, when we began doing this, for instance, she’d come home from school after not talking all day at school.
And I’m sure being nervous, worried, anxious at school, she would get home and just almost throw a fit, basically. Just, you know, fighting with her sister, just screaming, almost a temper tantrum. Very out of character. But it was always after school because she was clambed up for eight hours. You know, I would get to her later and say, okay, Hope, what, you know, earlier, what were you, what was going on? You know, what were you feeling? I don’t know. You know, after about 30, I don’t know. We would get to, oh, I was angry. I was mad. Well, you know, why are you mad? And it’s like Johnson said, it’s just her, if she can just go through the process of thinking, I am mad.
Okay, that’s what I felt. I’m mad. Why was I mad? I was mad because, and anxious because I wanted to talk at school and I felt nervous at school and uncomfortable at school all day. And then when I got home, I wasn’t anymore. So it’s that simple. I just let it out. And, you know, and now it’s to the point where, you know, and then actually in the beginning, she would get upset and she would cry when she would finally tell me the emotion that she was feeling. She would, you know, physically cry about it. Now, then she went through a pattern where she was just getting annoyed with me. She was just, and, you know, like Jonathan says, I don’t do, I didn’t do it every time. I would kind of pick my battles with her. I didn’t want to be in her face about it every night.
But if she’d have a moment, sometimes I’d give it a couple days. If I noticed that she, you know, if we were at a basketball game at school and a few of her friends from her class came up and said hi, and she didn’t say anything, I would later, you know, bring it up and say, hope. You know, I noticed, you know, this and you didn’t say hi. What was going on, you know? Well, you know, after the initial, I don’t know, she would try to change the subject. You know, she would, you know, try to avoid me. Oh, Mom, I’m tired. The number of active participants in the conference at this time is 60. The number of speakers in the conference at this time is two. You will now rejoin the conference. But she will finally say, you know what, I was quiet.
I felt quiet and I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say to them. I didn’t know, you know. And so we talk about that. But very, you know, went through the emotions, the range of emotions, crying and annoyed. She gets mad. Now she tries to avoid it when I talk to her. But you know what, we do it and we get it done. It would be easy for a parent to say, oh, this is too tough. You know, gosh, I’m not even, I don’t want to get, you know, she has, she had a hard enough time. Why am I making it any harder on her? You have to, you know? And that’s how I look at it. Okay, and key emotions are frustration, worry, nervous, proud, curious, frustrated, angry. What a lot of people don’t understand is they, you know, they say, my child is, my child seems happy, you know.
The person’s talking to them and they don’t talk back and they’re smiling. I want you to understand that the smile is characteristic of detachment. Now that is a very important concept to understand. The person with an anxiety disorder learns to detach. They don’t want to think about the issues. They don’t want to feel the feelings. They will do whatever they can do and it becomes a very insidious reflex. And the anxiety works its way into the personality over time. And this detachment becomes the major thing that has to be dealt with. And here’s an example. And just, you know, for the people who, you know, think that the people outgrow it, I’ve got a lot of teenagers and adults that I work with not only with social anxiety but who have patterns of selective mutism. Now one kid that I’m currently working with who is age 16.
Until a few months ago, never spoke in school. During the initial phase of therapy, when he would come up with his parents to my office, he was so nervous that he would have to literally hold on to the wall. He was so nervous, you know, walking up the steps. He can have a full conversation with me for 30 minutes. He just talked in school at age 16 for the first time last month. But he’s not talking in all the classes. And in school we have things pretty well coordinated through the school psychologist. The teachers have to, you know, fill in charts every week, you know, to be accountable. But here’s what the kid says. This is very important to understand. He says, I don’t want to talk in school because I don’t want to experience that difficult moment of talking because I don’t want the kids to see me as being weird.
Okay, now I say to him, how do you think they see you not talking in school? You don’t think you have a reputation? Okay. That is a compulsion. not to talk, not to deal with that moment of breaking the ice in school. Thank God he did it, okay. But do you see the reasoning that is profoundly distorted? It only gets worse over time. Now when you have an adolescent who has selective mutism, you also, in addition to the anxiety and the mutism, you also have a developmental disability. Meaning that all aspects, many aspects of the child’s maturation have been affected. Now many children, many dependents of all ages who have this problem are very smart intellectually.
But their emotional and social intelligence is retarded at the risk of offending anybody. I’m not pulling any punches here today. It’s very important that you understand the reality, okay. They can be very smart. I work with many brilliant people intellectually who have had substantial handicaps because of their performance and social anxiety. And here’s the story. One guy calls me four months ago. He’s 42 years old. He calls me and says, you know, I have selective mutism. My wife came downstairs the other day and she was talking to me. She wanted to talk to me. She was angry that my mother didn’t send birthday cards. And I didn’t talk to her. I had the thoughts going around and around in my head. This is his direct quote. But I couldn’t get them out. And she stormed upstairs.
She was angry. And then he asked me a question. Why do you think I waited so long to get therapy? Well, okay. The wife threatened divorce because of the mutism. In fact, they are getting a divorce. The thing that you have to understand about mutism is it’s a primitive. It’s symptomatic of primitive functioning even if the child is very smart. This person never would have gotten help if it were not for the external influence of the wife. People, children and adolescents with selective mutism are not capable of initiative. That doesn’t mean ability. Initiative means to start up there. It’s impossible. They don’t want to help themselves. They are not capable. So therefore parents have two choices. They either compensate for the child’s lack of initiative and learn what to do, or they will unwittingly be enabling the problem.
Carla, back to you now. Where are you at now? Can you describe where you’re at now, where hope is at now, and where you guys are at now as compared to when you started? Yes. Okay. When we started, hope was in second grade, was not talked about. Was not speaking in school at all. Wouldn’t raise her hand. It was so extreme, would not raise her hand to go to the bathroom. Did not want that attention on her. She would wait until she got home to go to the bathroom. She would have to bring her lunch every day to school because I guess she just didn’t want to even, she thought ahead, that if she didn’t, she would have to maybe interact with the lunch lady or someone in line. I mean, she just avoided, she thought ahead and she avoided a lot in school.
She wouldn’t go to other children’s homes for play dates. You know, if we had a play date, they would have to come to our home. And I would pretty much have to bring it along the whole time. She had a hard time even at our own home. Okay. Now, she speaks in school all the time. Her teachers say she raises her hand all the time, always volunteers. She, before, she wouldn’t speak to me even in front of other people in public. Now she speaks openly to me in front of anyone. She goes at two other children’s homes on play dates and enjoys it and wants to. She does fine.
She, let’s see, she… Today, we did that. Oh yeah, tell them your story today. We just had a good one today because I took her into a store just after school and we were coming out, got in the car, and she was like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. And I turned around and she like had rolled down her window. It was just me and her. And she was yelling out the window to… There was a family on the other side of our car with a little girl that was in her brownie class, her girl scouts. And, I mean, she doesn’t see her all the time in school, but she was yelling out and telling her hello. And that’s like a big step that we’re in right now is trying to get her to initiate. And, you know, I was all, you know, came home and told Carla and, you know, that was…
That’s kind of where we’re at as far as, you know, we think her next big step is going to be where she gets so comfortable that, you know, she’ll be able to talk and initiate just like she does at home. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best, I measure everything one to ten, how optimistic are you guys presently? Optimistic for her achieving… For continued progress and given what you… Oh, hence. I mean, I wouldn’t be doing this if I would. I mean, you have to be as a parent. You have to know it’s going to work and it’s going to, you know. I know it will. Right. If you do sustained hard work, what you guys are doing and, you know, some of the things I want to move to some other issues quickly because time is limited, but, you know, some of the things that we worked on is the whole concept of, you know, the paradoxical technique.
Parents get used to telling the child the answer, but when you learn to freeze the moment and you do the techniques of putting the pressure on the child to process, that’s very important. One of the things that you do is you don’t pressure the child to talk, you don’t bribe the child, you don’t plead with the child or beg because that will work in reverse. The pathology, which means disease will get worse. And one of the things that you learned was to not enable, but to be supportive and to nurture your child into the stress of reality with a matter of fact attitude. Okay. Now, let’s move into school. Here’s a deal with school. On a scale of one to ten, when the parents start therapy in terms of their learning, again, this is the Jonathan Baron technique, when they start for the sake of relativity there at a one, when they get to a seven, and everybody’s learning curve is different.
You know, people say, you know, how long does it take? I say, well, it depends upon the severity of the problem, the length of the problem and the learning curve. Okay. I don’t know if a person’s learning curve before I am working with them. Your learning curve is good. Not everybody’s is. You know, some people can get to a seven on the learning curve, you know, with the non-enabling and the emotional management and the whole deal. Some people can get there in a couple of months. Some people never get there. But when the learning curve is approximately a seven, then we go into school. We try to go into school. Now, here’s the thing with school because it’s complicated. First of all, some schools are great. Some schools are just wonderful, and the teachers are just wonderful, and the psychologists, and they really want to learn. And other schools basically say, screw you. Okay. So that is a very important variable.
But here is the most complex thing, because there’s lots of well-meaning, well-intentioned teachers and speech therapists and social workers and whatever to tell you what can we do in school. There are two choices as far as I’m concerned. So listen very carefully. Number one is when the parents get, I will never consult with the school unless I’m working intensively with the parents and they have to get to a seven. Because if you implement the techniques, the non-enabling techniques, the empowering techniques in the school, before the child has been programmed at home, it will be too much stress. It will fragment the situation, and it will make the situation worse. In most cases, there’s always an exception to the rule. So when the well-meaning teachers says, what can I do in the classroom, the basic thing is you either A, invest in this therapeutic blueprint that we’re talking about tonight, or you accommodate.
Now, there’s two types of accommodation. There’s positive and negative. Positive accommodation is understanding the special needs of the child and implementing the techniques and the strategies and the spin-offs of that that we’re talking about today. The other form, listen carefully, is making the classroom easier. There is an organization, for example, there is a doctor who will sell you prepackaged tape recordings so that when the child does not speak in school, they’ll push a button and the tape recordable will speak for the child. That will accommodate the child. That will accommodate the classroom. And believe me, I understand that it’s difficult. You know, typical teacher has 20, 30 kids in the class.
There’s an X amount of attention. You can get to anyone’s job. Okay? That form of accommodation, while it will make the classroom scenario easier and with less stress, will kill the mental health of the child. Because the child learns that they don’t have to try and the world will adapt to them. It is, as far as I’m concerned, extremely sick. And it is a guaranteed way to make the child more dependent. And over-dependence is a profound part of the problem. So, there’s a lot of things that teachers can do, but the parents have to get to that 70% mark for the child to be able to handle the stress of true non-enabling in the class.
Now, one of the things that the readers are talking about tonight is that when they’re going through the therapeutic process, it’s hard. It’s not easy. It’s hard. And there has to be the belief that there’s going to be a payoff for doing the hard work. And when I do consult with teachers, which I do all the time, the biggest mistake that teachers make is to say, okay, Jonathan is giving a strategy. So, there should be a simple stimulus response thing. When I teach teachers how to do the freeze the moment technique and to not let the other kids talk for the child, which is a very common thing, the thing they need to understand, given the obsessive nature of the problem, keyword obsessive, is that they have to sustain their efforts.
And sadly, many teachers burn out. The world is not fair. And this is an example of the world not being fair, but there is a right and wrong way to deal with this problem. There is another therapist who has a technique where, let’s say they’re teaching the child to be verbal and they’re talking, let’s say the goal is to have the child say the word apple. So they go app, go app, and then pull. Very slowly. I think that’s nonsense. Okay? Because this is not a speech disorder. We know the child can talk. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to condition the child that they have to take the risk.
And I got to tell you, one of the key things for a lot of parents is when they get to the point that they take the kid to a restaurant. And some people listening will say, well, my child can speak at the restaurant. That’s very good. But many can’t. And so we take the child to the restaurant and we tell them that if you’re not going to order verbally, you’re not going to get the food. Now, don’t try that now. If you’re not working with me, don’t try that tonight. Okay? Please. I beg it because you’re asking for trouble. Okay? Because a lot of times they don’t talk and they get angry. Okay? And the parents have to work through their own guilt or whatever. So often that is the turning point because the anger is a good thing because the parents have the opportunity to process that anger. But the parents got to be strong enough as a team to do that. Now, also, there are lots of things like, you know, in addition to IEPs and 504 plans.
And by the way, for a more in-depth information on school issues, there is another seminar that’s available at my website for two and a half hours. And I have a lawyer talking about legal issues with school. Carla, can you talk a little bit about how we intervene with school and what’s currently going on there versus before? Yes. At the beginning of this school year, Hope is entering third grade. And Jonathan and every… Well, first of all, fortunately, we, Hope goes to a private Lutheran school, which there’s nine kids in her whole class. She does share a class with the fourth grade, so there’s another nine. So there’s 18 kids in Hope’s class, like 70 kids in the whole school. Very small, everyone knows everybody. It’s a great atmosphere. The teachers, I’d say there were nine teachers, and that’s including the principal.
The pastor, everyone, was there for this conference. And Jonathan, we had, yeah, like I said, the conference at the beginning of the school year. We just wanted to get everybody on the same page. It went great. I mean, the teachers, it was amazing how amazed the teachers were. Most of them had never heard of selective mutism. Then they got to thinking back when they were in school, and they, you know, after the phone conversation, they would say, oh, you know what? I bet so-and-so had selective mutism. And they were thinking back on people, and they were just intrigued. It was very interesting to them. And Jonathan basically gave them techniques as he did us as parents on enabling. And, you know, because teachers, they unwillingly-yeah, they were doing it too.
They were doing it too. Enable as well, because, of course, I mean, for instance, before our phone conference call, like say in kindergarten first and second grade, they would let the other children speak for Hope. And the other kids took it upon themselves. It was almost like Hope was the, you know, the one, the baby that everyone took care of in the class. And they all, if somebody had a question for Hope, somebody would answer for her, just by Hope’s expressions, I guess. And the teachers allowed it. The teachers wouldn’t call on Hope because they knew she, you know, didn’t talk. They didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. They would allow her not, for instance, on roll call. Everyone had to say here. They didn’t make Hope say that. You know, they would just check her off.
In one example that- Well, it’s not that they didn’t make her. You can’t make the kid. But it’s the expectation, right? Okay. They didn’t ask her to talk, right? Make, ask. That’s what I mean. Yeah, because they knew she probably wouldn’t. So they avoided it. You know, they just didn’t do it. One instance, a teacher came up to me. I hope it was in second grade, and she was so excited and said, you know, Carla, today at choir, Hope, because they knew, you know, I had talked to them too about how Hope was, you know, we’d always have conferences and how I was trying to get her to talk more. And she said, Carla, you know, Hope volunteered to do, to say this line or to start the song in choir today. And she said, you know, she went up there, and I said, that’s great Hope.
Do you want, you know, Jenna to come up and help you? And, you know, and she said, and Hope said, no, no, I can do it. Well, then I said, you know, that is great. Thank you for telling me that. But she, I mean, I don’t- She didn’t realize it at the time, and I did tell her later, you know, that instance, that’s great. But next time, don’t ask her if she wants someone to come up with her. And don’t treat, you know, she was still treating her differently, even when Hope was volunteering. She still treated her like, you know, like she couldn’t do it herself, had no confidence. And, you know, if you treat kids like that, they’ll do it. And, you know, and then another teacher, for example, after we started, well, okay, that was before the conference.
Okay, now after the conference, the teachers, and I’ve talked with, she has one primary teacher, and I’ve spoke with her since. And she is very on board with the non-enabling and being consistent, and asking Hope questions, treating her the same as the other kids. She’s doing great. One thing I had asked after, you know, if she was not, you know, the non-enabling, and she said, you know what, I’m doing great. And then I’ve seen her a couple days later, and she said, Carla, you know, I thought about it. And, you know, I think I have been enabling in some ways, because there’s this thing where we have to say something in class, and I don’t make Hope say it. I kind of skip over it. So, you know, even it’s amazing how many times in a day a teacher can accommodate, or can, you know.
It’s very insidious. It becomes a reflex. But, you know, let’s just jump. I’ve got about ten more minutes here. One of my patients yesterday, 40 years old, PhD, brilliant guy. He’s an economist. He teaches other PhDs. And he has been avoiding presenting at professional conferences about work that he publishes. Now, I’m going to tell you, avoiding because of public speaking performance anxiety. This person, just like another person today, one of my patients, makes $2 million. He’s involved in a major player in a hedge fund. And he’s actually the go-to guy for public speaking and marketing. And no one knows that he’s got this underlying obsessive problem.
And making the $2 million a year, he said to me a couple of weeks ago, Jonathan, I’m thinking of leaving my job in this economic climate, you know, to mind-blowing. This is the obsessiveness underlying. And when it gets a hold of the personality, and the person is avoiding the things that they don’t want to be or shouldn’t be, I want you to understand something. The person is involved in self-loathing. They are hating themselves for doing it. And you may think that the young child is okay and happy. And you might think Jonathan’s an alarmist here. Well, you know, I’ve seen more people with this kind of problem than anybody in this world. So I feel pretty confident telling you this. The self-loathing can start at an early age, and the child is angry at themselves. And they see the world going on and they’re not a part of it.
They’re not happy campers when that goes on. There’s a silver lining here. For a long time, the average age of all of my patients was 27. The wonderful thing, thousands of patients, the wonderful thing when you have a four-year-old or a nine-year-old is that you have willing parents, you can attack the anxiety productively before it becomes more a part of the personality. That is a crucial thing for you to understand. Quite frankly, when parents are motivated, relatively intelligent, have realistic expectations and work as a team, I got to tell you, there hasn’t been situations that I have not had a relative degree of success. When I do not have success, it’s because the parents are not willing to do the work.
I’ve had plenty of people who the kid is 13 years old, 16 years old, and the parents cannot comprehend the concept of enabling. We’re not going to get anywhere with that. One issue that we did not talk about tonight, and I’m going to give you 30 seconds on, is the use of medicine. Going back to the 1-10 scale, when the parents get to a 7 with their re-parenting and the child is stuck frozen because of the intensity of obsessiveness, we often use medicine. 50% of my selectively mute people use it 50% do not. It depends on the customized needs. But when medicine is given as the primary therapy, it is quite frankly clinically criminal. It is not going to solve the problem.
Medicine is a specific tool to be used a specific way at a specific time for specific objectives for a specific length of time. There is specific medicine that needs to be used. I’m not going to get into that today because the last thing that I would want is people running out and using this medicine. However, on the other seminar that I mentioned that you can get at socialanxiety.com, there is a psychiatrist who talks in depth about medicine. Resources for you. If people want follow-up help. Obviously, the number one productive is therapy. One person said, how can we do therapy over the telephone? My kid doesn’t talk. Obviously, they are not getting the issues here. It is the parents who learn to be the therapist, whether I have clients in Taiwan, in England.
All you need is a telephone and the right attitude. Therapy spaces are extremely limited. And quite frankly, before people decide to do therapy, they probably should invest in some of the self-help programs. The book Beyond Syness, you can get not only at my website but at Simon & Schuze during that gives you a holistic understanding of the problem. There is a self-help program for selective mutism and another seminar for selective mutism. There is lots of things available to you. You know what? Carla and Kirk, I think this was almost an hour. Obviously, I have been taping this and I am going to be putting this on the website for people to listen to. I think you guys did great and I thank you for your input. Are there any final words of wisdom that you can leave the audience with?
I could say it is very tough to do. But like Jonathan said, if you stay the course and know what the reward is that you are aiming for, I mean I don’t think anybody is successful in life without going through tough times. I think that is kind of the way we have taken on this with our daughter. We know there is going to be some tough times but in the end we are looking at the end result. That is what we are shooting for. During the tough times I feel like it is okay because I know I look down the road. And as a parent, my turning point was here I am looking at my daughter in second grade, sitting alone at recess, not playing when the other kids are playing or sitting alone at lunch.
Fast forward that to eighth grade. If you do nothing, nothing is going to change. She will be sitting alone by her locker in eighth grade, sitting alone at lunch in eighth grade. You do not want that regret as a parent. It is your job to take responsibility for them. You are not going to be around forever. You are hopefully going to outlive your children. You do not want your child to be this dependent and this unhappy. You do not want to have to worry about that when you are gone. I do not. As a parent, I think it is the only choice. I think it is a great thing to do and I am very happy. Kirk and I are doing it. Jonathan is fantastic. Hey guys, thank you very, very much for sharing.
Audience, I hope this has stimulated some productive thinking for you guys. Again, you can tell people who are not able to make the conference in a couple of days. I will have this on my website. People can just listen to this all interview. Kirk and Carla, thank you very much guys. I am going to say good night and go Red Sox and I will see you soon. Take care. Take care. Bye bye.
