Teen not Verbally Communicating

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I posted the message below in the parents sections and am cross posting here to ask for help from others who may have some helpful information:

Our AS daughter stopped verbally communicating over the summer after completing 8th grade and now only communicates via text messaging and writing notes. On occasion, I can get her to whisper to me. Over the semester she has adjusted to high school, made a few friends - they text to each other to communicate, and works with a school counselor to deal with any issues that may come up.

My husband is not handling the non verbal communication well at all; verbally abusive at times because of the issue. In fact he has stated that our daughter is doing this as a control issue and knows exactly what she is doing; along with telling me I am a failure because our daughter is not speaking. Husband refuses to write notes, does not own a cell phone and thinks that text messaging is rude, also hates emailing. To him verbally speaking is the only way to communicate.

My daughter is currently working with a therapist to help us figure out why she is not speaking and just started Paxil to help with the depression we were seeing. After 3 weeks on the Paxil, our daughter is smiling more and she is whispering to me more.

When I asked my daughter why she is not speaking she has stated on different occasions that her throat hurts. Her doctor checked her throat and saw nothing out of the ordinary to be concerned about.

My question to others is: have you experienced this issue and how did you handle it? What interventions/measures did you take to help your child/family deal with going from verbal to non verbal. Are there any techniques that we can use to help our daughter start speaking again? Could there be something physical/neurological/emotional that we are unaware of and the doctor/therapist needs to check?

My take is that her father is the one who needs therapy. I would shut down verbally also, like your daughter, if I were around a person who behaves as you describe your husband, e.g. "verbally abusive".

What I miss from reading your description of home life is what happens when your daughter does speak aloud at home. The fact that when she does choose to speak it is only to you, and in a whisper such that others (such as her father) are less likely to hear, and hence less likely to respond or react, causes me to wonder if speaking aloud results in her experiencing some manner of negative response or behavior.

Otherwise, your daughter's behavior seems quite what I might expect and view as normal under the circumstances for someone with AS.

My dad was/is verbally abusive so everyone in our household tries not to speak very much when around him. He is a "rageaholic" and looks for any excuse to get spitting mad. Of course the fact that we try and do what he asks without saying a word to him just makes him angrier. At least with this method we can sit him in front of the TV and shut him up for a couple hours like a grumpy toddler.

^ I agree.

Yeah. I think that her dad needs to stop being such a jerk. He might think that he can force her to talk, but that's the worst possible approach. It just makes her more anxious and makes it even harder for her to talk. He might as well be hitting the "off" switch on the parts of her brain that deal with language.

Get Daddy into anger management. He needs to stop yelling at her. Whether she starts talking when he stops being "verbally abusive" is immaterial--no one, whether they have selective mutism or not, should have to put up with that kind of treatment from the people she is supposed to be able to trust.

Keep lines of communication open to your daughter, whether that's texting or writing or whispering. Use sign language, semaphore, and pictograms if you have to. Communication is the important thing, not how it's done.

Teens get pretty stressed. This happens a lot. Give her time, maybe get her speech therapy. Selective mutism in autism is a common problem, but if it doesn't keep you from communicating, it's not a major one.

I don't know if the OP is in the States or not, but if so this appears to be a violating of the laws on abusing disabled people.

The father knows the daughter has a neurological disability and that her symptoms are not faked, yet he claims this new situation is a case of her faking.

Does he even understand that some autistics can/do not speak?

Anyone working with the daughter, maybe a social worker, should be made aware that this is turning into an abusive situation, and it's happening quickly, so action needs to be taken quickly.

Someone the father "has to" listen to needs to get on his case, even if it goes as far as going to court.

Verbally abusing a child with a disability is outside his rights/authority as a parent. The girl needs to be protected from this.

If you don't do something the abuse can cause permanent damage to their psyche. I'm unable to conceive of myself being successful because I was so often told what a failure I was. I have trouble completing homework assignments and projects because when they near completion I start having intense irrational bouts of anxiety and self destructive behavior. I actually feel sh***y about myself when I succeed and relived when I fail. I interpret praise as sarcasm and repudiation as deserved. In at least three classes I failed to complete high-pressure final exams or projects and only in retrospect realized I was self-sabotaging and could have completed them just fine. When I was in high-school my mom asked me if she should get divorced and I said no because we needed my dad to pay a share of the mortgage and even though he was/is an a**hole she still loved him and needed him emotionally. I'm not sure if that was the right decision because now he's doing the same thing to my younger siblings: driving us to fail and accept failure as the inevitable consequence of being who we are. The sad thing is he doesn't even realize what he's doing. He thinks he is being helpful. Am I allowed to hate him?

1. Get rid of your douchebag of a husband.

I am almost positive that my husband is on the spectrum also, but he would never admit it. His answer to all problems is get a prescription from the doctor because a pill will fix everything and go to a therapist.

The therapist that my daughter is seeing has stated that selective mutism appears to be what is going on. I am working really hard to keep the lines of communication open with my daughter by texting and writing notes. She is willing to converse with anyone who will text with her or write notes. It is amazing the number of people, even her peers, who have gone out of their way to communicate with her utilizing both communication methods.

That's great that others are willing to write to her.

Imagine if your speech centers cut out and the more you tried to talk the harder it got to do... Or maybe imagine you just have a really, really bad case of laryngitis. You can't talk. But hey, you can still write, so it's not that bad. What would be really really bad is if people tried to make you talk by refusing to let you write. Because that would just make things worse. You'd feel horrible about it and your brain would lock up even worse.

I'm regrettably familiar with the experience of living with someone who is autistic and in denial--my mom is that way. I'm more of a classic autistic with good verbal skills; she's more like a stereotypical Aspie, with no imagination, strong special interests, a loud voice, and sensory hypersensitivity like nobody's business. She would get angry at me for not helping her; she blamed her stress and overload on everybody else, because she was in denial about being different. The really ironic thing is that she works with disabled people as an occupational therapist, but she's so scared of disability, like it's the worst thing that could ever happen to you. She seems to think that disability is always severe and obvious and completely stops you from being able to do anything useful, ever. So she's in denial about being autistic because of this internalized prejudice... she thinks she couldn't possibly be disabled because she knows she's not useless and pitiful. To keep her idea of herself as "I'm not disabled", she didn't just refuse to acknowledge that she has deficits; she also refused to acknowledge that I did. I went without any kind of treatment until I was an adult and on my own despite my inability to actually take care of myself.

It's not really the autism that's the problem, really. Not with my mom. It's the denial and the prejudice against disability, the idea that disability is shameful and something you've got to distance yourself from because nothing on Earth is worse than being disabled. She honestly seems to think that hurting me, hurting herself, is okay if it just means that we don't get "labeled". She took me out of school when she started suspecting they'd want to diagnose me with autism. I attended mainstream school for a total of two years. Everything else was home-school or tiny religious private schools where you'd be more likely to get an exorcism than a psychotherapist.

I think that's enough of a rant about my mom. *sigh* I don't know if your husband is autistic, in denial, scared of disability, like my mom is, but... well, let's hope he listens more than she does.

Here's something that could be happening to your daughter. Whenever an "asperger" person is put into a face to face social situation. We go into a state of RED ALERT. fear, anxiety and panic all set in and can send adrenaline levels skyrocketing. Plus we have a very hard time with social cues and body language. Because of these limitations that aspie people have. It's much easier for one to express themselves in writing. So if your daughter want to speak in writing. Let her. She might feel much much more comfortable that way and she may be able to express fellings that she would have been otherwise afraid of.

Your husband being on the spectrum or not isn't the problem. It's the way he's treating your daughter. That's what has to be addressed.

You brought it to us, so I have to assume you aren't happy with the way he's treating her.

You say the therapist is using the term "selective mutism". Should we understand that to mean that the therapist feels your daughter could talk if she really wanted to? (Few of us here are autism professionals so leaving the term unexplained is making things a little lumpy.)

Even if the therapist's view supports your husband's position, the way you make it sound he's reacting is inappropriate. Most if not all of us who've replied support you doing something to protect your daughter from him. It's YOU who has to take the needed steps, however. Making a neutral reply to us isn't addressing the problem.

Himm. I have always been non-verbal so idk about suddenly becoming non-verbal. What I have these days is called selective mutism. I have been getting speech therapy for it for the last couple of years. I do know that communicating textually is a million times easier for me than verbally. Maybe verbal has always been a huge strain on her and now that she has a textual outlet, something in her brain said "no more". Non verbal is often a part of autism and sometimes has to be accepted. Even though my folks are trying to help me be more verbal - I know that they are okay with me not achieving this so I feel no pressure from them. The last thing that will get me talking is pressure.

No, selective mutism is not voluntary. It's called "selective" because it results in people who can talk in some situations but not others--like how she can whisper sometimes, to people she trusts, but not talk usually. "Selective" here means that the mutism occurs only in some (or in most) situations, not that the person who can't talk has chosen not to talk. It is usually related to anxiety, almost as though the anxiety shuts down their ability to speak.

I suspect that the way selective muteism works is in some situations the individual is basically experiencing a panic attack and cannot speak, in other situations they can think enough to speak.