Triumph Over Adversity 3-in-1 Collection. Casey Watson

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СКАЧАТЬ that happens – not to mention when – will depend to a great extent on what made her choose silence in the first place.’

      ‘So that is a fact, then,’ I asked, ‘that the child actively chooses not to talk?’

      Mr Gregory made a yes and no gesture with his hands. ‘It’s probably too simplistic to talk in those terms, but, to an extent, yes – in that it’s an anxiety disorder rather than a physical one, whether it’s conscious or not. It’s usually something that happens to a child who already has a nervous disposition, and that in itself is often inherited from a parent.’

      Which parent in this case? I found myself wondering. Mum or dad? That in itself would be a useful thing to know.

      ‘Children with SM,’ Mr Gregory went on, ‘are characterised by their ability to speak normally in an environment in which they’re comfortable – say, at home – but unable to communicate in stressful social situations, of which school, for most children, is the most obvious example.

      ‘It often starts young, too – typically when a child first encounters school or nursery, and it needs careful, consistent management if it’s not to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s one of those mental health disorders, sadly, that feeds off itself, so the last thing to do is to leave it to sort itself out in the hopes that it will get better, because generally it won’t.

      ‘There is another type of SM, however, that can be brought on by a specific stressful life-event or sudden trauma. This is slightly different in that it tends to be more conscious a withdrawal of speech; they are choosing not to speak as a way of retreating from the reality of an unbearable situation. Again, if this is left unchecked, the prognosis tends to be poor, as it can then morph into the former type of SM, with all the negative ramifications that has.’

      Mr Gregory paused for breath, then smiled. ‘Does that all make sense?’

      Gary nodded, and I resisted the urge to reach again for my notebook. I was itching to write all this down. ‘Yes, it does,’ Gary said. ‘And I suppose the first thing we need to do is identify exactly where Imogen fits into this. She’s obviously not been mute since pre-school – well, as far as her records show, anyway – and from what we’ve heard from her grandparents’ – he glanced across at me – ‘she’s the antithesis of the shy, nervous type at home.’

      I nodded. ‘And I’ve seen that for myself, when I visited. From what I’ve seen, Imogen isn’t an anxious child, particularly – just a challenging and deeply unhappy one.’

      ‘So you heard her speak, then?’ Mr Gregory asked.

      ‘Yes and no. I heard her shouting, but I didn’t actually see her. Her grandparents told me she always was very vocal – and extremely demanding, too – but as soon as she was aware of my presence she stopped speaking immediately.’

      ‘I think you’ve probably just answered Mr Clark’s question, then,’ Mr Gregory said. ‘And having looked at the notes you emailed, the picture seems reasonably clear. Imogen’s selective mutism is probably a post-traumatic coping mechanism. In which case the key thing is to find out what’s caused it. Which is the poser, of course – since, unless we find a way in, she’s not going to tell you.’

      ‘She did try to speak to me, actually,’ I said. ‘At least I think she did. Last Friday.’

      I told them both about the few words Imogen had managed to get out, and how I’d been pondering what they might mean all weekend.

      ‘The mother, perhaps?’ Gary wondered. ‘It would be interesting to find out more about that whole situation, wouldn’t it? What actually happened there. How rare must it be for a mother to leave her child so completely?’

      ‘And so suddenly, come to that,’ I agreed.

      ‘It certainly sounds as if the mother leaving might be the root,’ Mr Gregory said. ‘Though this happened a couple of years back, did it not?’ We both nodded. ‘Yet the SM is fairly recent – a matter of months, isn’t it? What about the grandmother? How do you think things are there?’

      ‘Difficult to tell,’ I said. ‘Though I know both grandparents are at the end of their tether. As I suppose they would be, given their age and state of health. And there’s also the step-mum, of course – she was apparently also at her wits’ end; in fact, it’s the step-mum who appears to have been the main target of Imogen’s distress. That’s why the grandparents have her living with them now – because she simply couldn’t cope with Imogen’s tantrums any more.’

      ‘Of course, what we most need,’ Gary said, ‘is for Imogen herself to tell us what’s wrong, isn’t it?’

      I nodded. ‘Which is only going to happen if we can get her to speak while she’s in school. Which is the problem. Because as soon as she was aware she had my full attention when she did speak, it was like a physical shut-down. Wham! Shop closed till further notice, you know?’

      ‘Well,’ said Mr Gregory, ‘that’s mostly what I’m here for. To give you a selection of strategies to try, in order to bring that happy state of affairs about. So, to start …’

      Now I did open my notebook.

      An hour and a half and four mugs of coffee later Gary and I were armed with what almost felt like an information overload – it seems there were as many ways of trying to crack the code of a child’s selective mutism as there were reason for them ‘choosing silence’ in the first place. I learned something else, too – that a lot of the strategies I’d been reading about on the internet, and which I’d thought sounded logical, were, in fact, absolute no-nos. I grinned to myself as I headed back to the staffroom, thinking how I might not run that particular one past Mike. Being non-digital-age compliant almost as a career choice, my husband was always sceptical about my internet browsing and the ‘facts’ it threw up. ‘The internet isn’t God, Casey,’ he’d often be heard pontificating from on high. ‘Just because bloody googly, or whatever it is, says so, that doesn’t automatically make it right!’

      But it was with that in mind that I took advantage of the hour I had to kill before the lunch bell; which I spent in a quiet corner of the staffroom, with both computer and books, to try and pull together – or at least make a start on pulling together – some sort of reference guide of strategies we could put in place for Imogen right away.

      I thought she might what? That was the first question I wanted to answer. Might come home again? Might send me back to Dad’s? Might have abandoned me? Answer that, instinct told me, and we’d be on our way.

Chapter 10

      I was buzzing by the time I got home from work that evening. I felt all the new stuff I’d learned whooshing round in my head, and on the verge of a very important breakthrough. I knew that all I had to do was to work out and apply the right strategy, and bingo. What that was going to be exactly, I hadn’t quite worked out yet, but I was determined to keep up the momentum.

      ‘So, after tea,’ I told Mike as he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, ‘I’m going to set up shop at the dining table and finish writing up my plans – I know I can do it.’

      ‘Do what?’

      ‘Get Imogen to speak, of course. Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying?’

      He СКАЧАТЬ