Guilt

We learned really early on that not a lot of people know about Selective Mutism.  We heard "he is just stubborn" "he will out grow it" and " he is just pretending" a lot

I also got the look a lot - you know the look- the one that judges you as a parent, the one that says oh so you did this.  Heaped on top of the guilt I already felt - was I too strict, not strict enough, was it genetic, was sending him to preschool too stressful?  What had I done or not done to make my beautiful, smart, funny boy stop speaking?
And why was there no one in our tiny isolated northern town who could help us. We felt alone.

So we ventured into the internet- trying to wade through it and find that one journal article that would cure our boy or at least help him to speak to us.  While there are lots of brilliant scholarly articles there many out there that blame the parents especially the mom.  And as a mom who was already struggling with the loss of her sons voice this hurt more than I ever could have imagined, I began to doubt myself more - I cried - a lot - I felt so much guilt and even though I knew deep down that I didn't cause big guy's selective mutism  seeing "experts" lay the blame on mom's everywhere was devastating.

Then one day,not long after reading those articles, I woke up  I realized I didn't cause it. Selective mutism is a mental health disorder and I didn't cause it but I could do everything to help my son.  We would be his therapist if none were available, we would be the experts if there weren't any near us and the wait lists in other towns were too long (we were on the wait list 20 months before moving - we are now on a new wait list in another province).

And so we delved back into the journal articles and studies and we began reading.