Teen not Verbally Communicating

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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 other parents is: have you experienced this issue with your teenager 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 that we are unaware of and the doctor needs to check?

Did you have her checked for allergies? When I was younger I had a very painful throat, but according to the doctor there was nothing to see, no inflammation or anything. Turned out it was an auto-immune thing. It REALLY hurt, but there was nothing to see. The only reason the doctor recognized it was because he himself had the same problem once. I'm not saying this is what your daughter has, but it could be worth checking out.
I got anti-histamine pills for a while and it disappeared. After a while I stopped taking them, and while I still have other allergies and auto-immune problems, the throat pain hasn't come back.

interesting...it almost sounds like selective mutism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_mutism
This probably wouldn't be diagnosed in someone who already has an AS diagnosis, but if it is functioning the same way (i.e. she is anxiously avoiding speaking because she is afraid of the potential embarrassment), then it can be treated the same way. Just a thought, I'd look to those experts working with her and see what they have to say.

Here is some more good information. Perhaps some of it can help your husband better understand.


Aspergers and Selective Mutism

The therapist that my daughter is working with has already identified the non verbal communication as "selective mutism". For me the most troubling aspect is the fact that she was a chatter box up to the beginning of summer 2013. Then she slowly became non verbal with non family members. Once school started she then became non verbal with family members.

I have tried to identify any particular incident that might have cause her to decide not to speak, but nothing comes to mind.

The cause doesn't have to be a major traumatic event. It could have been one kid who said "you talk funny" once. Then after that, she may have started avoiding talking around that kid. The way avoidance and anxiety work; the more you avoid, the stronger your conviction that avoiding the feared stimulus (in this case talking to specific people, or categories of people) is what is keeping you safe (e.g., not embarrassed, teased, harrassed, or whatever she imagines might happen). So a small thing may have started the snowball, and then by persistently avoiding talking, she kept it rolling, until it got to where it is. For all anxiety disorders, the key to fighting them is in trying to engage in the thing that you are afraid of, without any safety behaviors (things you do to make you feel safe, such as not talking, talking quietly, etc.). Ideally this is done slowly, starting at things that are only slightly scary, and working up to the scarier things over several sessions (depending how diverse the fears are)

It's called Graduated (slowly working up) Exposure (exposing yourself to the feared stimulus) and Response Prevention (stopping safety behaviors). Another helpful tool is counter-conditioning, where not only does someone expose themselves to the feared stimulus, but they pair strong reinforcement with it. This is especially important when working with people who can't buy into the treatment goals (because of their developmental level, or lack of verbal ability). Selective mutism is pretty rare, and though I've never treated it myself, I believe there are some specific tricks to treating it, but the basic principles are the same.