Quitting the Quiet: Program Helps Selectively Mute Children Overcome Anxieties

Dec. 16, 2011— -- At home, Jake Semmel acts like a happy-go-lucky 6-year-old who loves "Star Wars" and fire trucks. At home, Maya Walker, 7, is a chatterbox.

But in public, Jake will only speak to a select few adults in his life and can't even talk to his grandparents. At school, Maya hasn't said a word in class for an entire year. She doesn't move a muscle when she's on stage during the school pageant. She could never blow out the candles at her own birthday parties.

"I kind of describe it like a Jekyll and Hyde," said Maya's mother, Tessie Scroggins. "She's your normal 6-year-old at home, talkative and being a ham and dancing and singing. Outside of the home, if other people look at her, it seems like she's a depressed kid."

"People make assumptions about people who don't talk," added her father, Vincent Walker. "That they are shy, that they're not as intelligent."

While many quiet kids like Jake and Maya are misdiagnosed with autism or Asperser's, child psychologist Dr. Steven Kurtz said he believes these children suffer from "selective mutism" -- an extreme anxiety disorder often combined with social phobia.

"Selective mutism" is different from extreme shyness. Kurtz explained that shy kids will benefit from "warm up time" in ways that kids with selective mutism do not.

To treat kids with this condition, Kurtz created an intensive week-long therapy program in a simulated school-like setting for the Child Mind Institute in New York City. There are only 22 coveted spots for the five-day "boot camp," of which both Jake and Maya made the cut, and it could change the course of their lives. Some kids are prescribed anti-anxiety pills, but others, like Jake, take no medication.