The child who chats all the way home but goes quiet at nursery

At pick-up, a mum laughs and tells you her daughter hasn’t stopped talking since they left the car park. Songs, questions, a running commentary on everyone’s lunch. You smile along, because inside the setting that same little girl hasn’t said a word to an adult since February.

Most practitioners have met a child like this. The comfortable explanation is shyness, and that she’ll grow out of it. Sometimes that’s true. But for some children the silence is something more specific: selective mutism, an anxiety disorder in which a child who speaks freely in some situations is consistently unable to speak in others.

Not shyness, and not a choice

The word “selective” misleads people. It sounds as though the child is choosing an audience, granting words to some people and withholding them from others. What’s actually happening is closer to a freeze response. The expectation to talk triggers anxiety, and the anxiety shuts speech down. A child with selective mutism isn’t refusing to speak. In that moment, in that place, she can’t.

That distinction changes how we respond. If you read the silence as stubbornness, the natural instinct is to coax, bribe or gently insist. “Can you say thank you?” Well-meaning pressure of that kind tends to deepen the anxiety, and with it the silence.

Signs usually become visible between the ages of two and four, which is precisely when children are with us. Alongside the quietness itself, you might notice a lack of eye contact, a stiff or frozen posture when an unfamiliar adult speaks to them, or sudden flashes of frustration that seem to come from nowhere. Left unsupported, selective mutism can persist through childhood and sometimes into adult life. Early years practitioners are very often the first professionals in a position to notice it and respond well.

Describe what you see, not what it might be

None of this means we start attaching labels to two-year-olds. Diagnosis belongs to specialists. Our job is to observe carefully and record factually: where the child does talk, where they don’t, who with, and what’s happening around those moments. “Chats happily to her key person in the garden, silent at the snack table when other adults join” is worth far more to a speech and language therapist than “very shy”.

A record like that also gives you something concrete and unalarming to share with parents. Many families will tell you, often with relief, that they’ve seen the same pattern at Grandma’s house or at swimming lessons.

What actually helps

The encouraging part is that support for selective mutism is gentle, practical and well within reach of an ordinary nursery team. The best-known approach is the sliding-in technique, where someone the child already talks to comfortably, usually a parent, is gradually joined by a new person in small, planned steps, so speech is invited rather than demanded and confidence builds at the child’s own pace. Another useful tool is the talking map, a simple way of charting where and with whom a child feels able to speak, so you can plan the next small step instead of hoping for a giant leap.

Both techniques are explored in detail in our online Selective Mutism course, along with what causes the condition, the situations that can trigger it, and how to tell it apart from ordinary shyness.

The thread running through all of it is the same: take the pressure off. Games that don’t need words. Accepting a nod or a point as full participation. Warm attention that doesn’t hinge on getting an answer. For children heading to school in September, the summer term now underway is a genuinely useful window, because the earlier the support starts, the smoother that transition tends to be.

And the next time a parent laughs about the chatterbox who falls silent at the nursery door, you’ll know exactly what to watch for.