Chatty 6-Year-Old Goes Mute Every Time She's At School | My Child's Not Perfect | Real Families

[Music] in every classroom up and down the country in every home no matter how big or small and in every family rich or poor one in ten children under the age of 16 is struggling to fit in it's like having two children in one whether the issues are behavioral emotional or clinical i realized that oh my gosh i'm being sick like 10 times a day the whole family's life just got blown out of the water whatever their condition more than half of these vulnerable kids will go undiagnosed on the referral they'd written selective mute at the age of 14 i felt like i was throwing my life away are we bad parents have we done this wrong [Music] get out of the as they embarked on a journey to understand their child's behavior you just feel so helpless and nothing you can do no don't like me what to do and through therapy and that it was my kid i would want her to be on medication learn to cope with what having a child who is different really means sometimes you just think well what did i do wrong how come they got the perfect child and that's a horrible feeling it does make you feel like such a nasty person even in the idyllic affluent suburbs of bramhall near manchester things aren't always as perfect as they seem people don't have problems in bramble they don't even divorce they don't argue your only problem in bramall is that your tire goes on your new aston martin there's only me with a child with mental health problems ten-year-old adam is not like other boys his age since he was a baby charlotte has known there was something different about her eldest son's behavior yeah yeah particularly towards his younger brother sam we had a side by side buggy when sam was born and adam used to attack him so he had to buy a front and back one and he used to attack children in valley nursery and he was like three the children had come out from the cloak room with scratches and claw marks bite marks and there was nothing they could do i like play football i don't like doing going to school i like having lunch there over the last eight years there have been dozens of assessments but adam's parents have still yet to get a diagnosis he's got speech and language issues he's got behavioral issues he's got autistic spectrum traits he's got strange tics he's got what they call magpie syndrome where he takes things so none of that fits into a nice package so they all say he's an anomaly or he we don't know sorry i've been in doctor's surgeries in bramall when adam's kicked off and i've had people tut at me i've had people say to me i'm in here for a headache you know if you had one of those leather helmets somewhere children bang their heads then yeah people are thinking oh bless her she's managing all right she's coping but without a formal diagnosis for what is wrong with adam charlotte has no option but to send him to a mainstream school where he struggles to communicate and so expresses himself through anger and regressive behavior baby noises happen every single day up to 50 times a day on a bad day 10 times a day on a good day for any reason he could be in a good mood bad mood angry cross happy sad he also started recently sucking his fingers and his thumbs and that's another sign of him regressing into a place where he felt no responsibility and no anger to speak of just any stressors and any problems and any worries weren't his they were mine and the baby noises are him being back in that place [Music] adam's dad works away a lot but luckily charlotte's parents live close by to offer support i think he feels mostly secure around family he isn't under any pressure to behave to be normal oh gorgeous i think he struggles with understanding himself one of the hardest things i've had to deal with is the noises that he makes and the the the the is the tail it will pull i think why that's hardest is because that's when it doesn't look normal that's when it's like somebody's smacking you in the face and saying he isn't normal i get looks like well for god's sake i'm sure daddy could pay for it and yeah we probably could but what what can we pay for what you can't pay for him to have an operation that's going to give him normal life but adam's adam and we just love him to bits next week charlotte is taking adam to see a child and adolescent psychiatrist in a last-ditched attempt to get some answers do you know why we have to go and see these doctors why what's poorly plus get crossed don't you yeah who do you get crosstalk don't put your things in there [Laughter] particularly yeah you've got grass all over your face now i love them what makes you angry um [Music] people people yeah [Music] that was me on during the gig and i was roughly a year ago 16-year-old henry was at a party playing a gig with his band and this is literally minutes before when an unexpected event changed his life it was at my house and um it was my dad's birthday and the lights flashed and he just kind of it was quite odd because he was he he sat down and he suddenly went very pale so that was quite scary i didn't pass out but i just went like normal over they first thought it was epilepsy and then he started doing all these weird things henry was having a severe fit as many as 150 separate ticks in a minute the tick attack that the really big one that he suffered certainly came out of the blue as far as i was concerned jolted his head back his whole body was moving he was just jerking he couldn't control his arms his legs his head his pupils were dilated he had cold cleansed skin and it then it kind of got into like the vocal tics and stuff quite scary and then you start asking some questions you know have you taken any drugs the answer to all those questions was no and that was a day when our lives changed the whole family's life just got blown out of the water [Music] henry was diagnosed with tourette's syndrome i wished it had been a brain tumor because at least they can zap it and cut it out tourette's is a neurological condition said to affect one in every 100 school children although not every case is as severe as henry's every day was just really upside down at that point you don't know whether you're coming or you're going is characterized by multiple physical ticks and at least one vocal tic on average every five seconds henry's body moves uncontrollably you feel like a mental buildup in your head like a headache just pulsing in your head and so when you finally release the tick you just sort of drain drains out of your head out of your mouth and have your head out of your arm at every family get together tourette's is always the uninvited guest henry is one of ten percent of tourette's sufferers who also has coprolalia or uncontrollable swearing these words are often racially abusive but are not a reflection on the sufferers thoughts or views please disgust me it's a tip how am i supposed to know involuntary action carl but give us an involuntary opinion henry's school friends have stood by him despite the heavy cocktail of drugs he needs to control his symptoms the drugs that he's on sometimes cause him to almost have like mood swings so he can get a real extreme like annoyed argumentative or extremely happy and laughing he won't as a person i don't think his personality's changed in any way at all which is good tourettes couldn't have come at a worse time in henry's life his gcses are approaching and his studying is not going well a year ago before tourette's i was on target for a's all pro but now i'm just aiming for a c in all subjects because i've just been ticking all over the place my concentration's gone down and um i can't really focus on anything or take stuff in [Music] most 16 year olds struggle with what to wear for a night out or what to spend their birthday money on for henry however he is faced with the dilemma of slowing his mental processes with drugs or living with constant violent ticks sometimes i just feel like just somebody [ __ ] kill me not like literally kill me but i just get rid of it [Music] to any parent six-year-old catherine is an ordinary lively talkative child [Music] she's a fun loving girl who loves things that are pink she loves her dolls she likes to be nice nicely dressed and she loves playing with her friends catherine lives with mum and dad and four-year-old sister evie if you saw her at home you wouldn't think that she had any problems if you saw her at school you would see a totally different six-year-old girl to the one that you see at home it's like having two children in one and every morning catherine's emotional state changes and she becomes a different child my car [Music] is very fat lunch bag that's right she's perfectly normal she chats to you and then you're going to drop her at school or at nursery and then you say become anxious so body language displays anxiety [Music] she gets what i call the symptoms of fight or flight she'll become tense she'll get tighter all over so it's almost as if she's closing a body in come on in miss brucey come on mrs hooligan good girl that's right do you want to run ahead kathryn no you're right catherine's been going to school every day for two years but each morning is as daunting as the first since the day she started school she's never spoken a word we are learning to solve a problem i haven't ever heard katherine speak out loud in the class or in a small group the most she has done is in a small group she kind of laughs out loud and will like make noises if she's playing a game and things like that but not not actually speaking out loud in the whole class no do we think we understand fantastic give me a smile if you understand when kathryn was two and a half uh we became aware that she wasn't communicating the way other boys and girls were of her age we didn't know at that time it was a condition we just thought again it was part of the shyness but what i am going to do but this is more than a fear of school because she wasn't talking catherine was referred to an educational psychologist on the referral they'd written selective mute it felt like a label it first of all felt like somebody's made that up and that's their best way of explaining what's wrong with catherine but i didn't like it i didn't like the term selective mute selective mutism is a communication disorder in which a person most often a child who is normally capable of speech is unable to speak in given situations selective mutism often coexists with shyness or severe social anxiety [Music] is that why catherine's crying why is catherine crying [Music] is that because people are coming one in a thousand children shut down like catherine in social situations it's not that she refuses to speak in public she simply can't catherine was once at school and was ill she vomited on herself at the dinner table she couldn't tell anybody that she felt ill being trapped in her silent world at school catherine is unable to verbally express how she feels or what she wants it's heartbreaking to see her want to do things and not being able to do them if catherine doesn't have any intervention and she still doesn't speak at school or in a social situation would drastically affect her in adulthood when she's a young woman what's she going to do so i need to get something in place whatever it is we both feel this i think this is but it's a necessity [ __ ] can't chip [ __ ] it way bollocks i'm gonna [ __ ] battle you out son while catherine struggles to find the words to express his health henry cannot stop himself from saying things he has no control over you [ __ ] yeah tourette's is incurable and it's the electrical impulses misfiring in his brain that are responsible for his uncontrollable motor and vocal function the headbanging tasers told me warm muscles come red raw oh there we go um it's easy because we often have headband conversations with my mates see it can last the longest and i'll always win he's been on medication to reduce the ticks but with his brain feeling like it's in a fog he's made the brave decision to stop taking the tablets in the hope he can study for his gcses since i stopped taking medication i've just generally felt more happier more lively uh you just do generally feel bad for not being drugged all the time but with the drugs consigned to the dustbin the ticks are back on the increase so mum emma is turning to alternative therapy when henry's back gets really bad all he's got to do is say the word mum i need a massage emma is a reiki master and massage therapist took the tips come out that's wearing a bit more swearing sentences and head banging and just the head switching really he said i love the feeling that my brain is alive i am alive i'm alert i'm not drugged yeah the fact that he's exhausted everybody around [Music] reiki is an energy it's not a human energy it's an uh an energy of the universe if you like since henry's been diagnosed with tourette's the different alternative therapies we have tried has been a bio-nutritionist my massage and reiki an acupuncturist the osteopath a homeopath and a regressional holistic therapist do you mind touch my head but it was the osteopath who made a startling discovery about henry's condition every time she came round to the back of his head to do some cranial work there we go i don't think he caught that he was he started to tip very violently [ __ ] off love you too darling as henry was about to discover his oversensitive jaw may be the key to helping alleviate his ticks it's every parents hope that they'll give birth to a healthy perfect child but since he was just a few months old charlotte knew that adam was different from her friend's children i did nothing wrong i didn't drink i didn't smoke nothing while i was healthy and sometimes you just think how come they got the perfect child and that's a horrible feeling it does make you feel like such a nasty person too because you're almost wishing that they hadn't adam has been prone to aggressive behavior for all his young life and charlotte fears for what this means for the future nobody listens to me and they never have i just know that unless we can get him the help now he will be in jail many young offenders have mental health disorders which have often gone undiagnosed adam isn't just a cross little boy he's not a little boy with an angry nature that's not him convinced that there is a clinical reason for adam's behavior charlotte is preparing for yet another mental health assessment but feeling let down by the system over the last eight years she's less than optimistic i feel a bit oh there's another two hours of me answering the same questions i'm telling the same thing and then i'll get a letter repeating everything i've said in the assessment and it'll say at the bottom we don't know every time it's something that adam has to go through again that he doesn't understand so i'm hoping this one's going to be different but we'll have to wait and see they've come to the priory hospital cheedle royal a specialist in-patient service for children and adolescents to meet with consultant psychiatrist dr fisa khan do you want to come with me the most important aspect of child psychiatry is observation and non-verbal communication okay tell me about your school now i'm just you know there's one one question which i want to ask you yeah do you think you're different than other kids tell me about it you tell dr khan yeah i think it will be important does it bother you that you're different does it sometimes how does it make you feel sad sad and what do you do when you're sad adam do you want mom to tell you don't ever say when you're sad do you so what do you do when you're sad cry cry yeah mum does he cry you only he only ever cries when he's hurt and that has to be seriously hurt you don't cry really do you at all he never has [Music] sometimes it's help with words because they're not in the bank i know adam is struggling to engage with the process in order for dr khan to come to a conclusive result she needs to carry out more tests so for now charlotte will have to wait another two weeks for her long-awaited diagnosis my favorite food is tuna because it's got salty six-year-old catherine suffers from selective mutism i live in a year ago because i don't talk one day i would like to talk at school when do you think that day will be don't know despite being told she'll eventually grow out of it after two years of silence at school her parents have decided to take a more proactive approach so today catherine is meeting michelle a speech and language therapist although michelle is a complete stranger it soon becomes clear that catherine has no problems talking out loud as long as she's in her own home already you're quick and i'm going right to the bottom it does go right at the bottom right uh there's a teddy on the sea so yeah i have loads of teddys do you so the next day michelle meets catherine in school to go through the same play therapy as she did at home to compare her reactions her body language had completely changed just on meeting her so that's why i offered to hold her hand because i think it's quite nerve-wracking walking into a room it's an underwater puzzle yes there's a boat back in her school environment catherine is reluctant to speak coming whoa she was pointing to different pictures to say that she'd noticed something is in the middle doesn't he do you watch aerial mermaid disney mermaids yeah a lot of her anxiety is related to in the environment the school environment and that's that's part of the condition that's nothing to do with the school that's part of her diagnosis should we put him over there that's brilliant i'm not going to make you talk i'm just going to make everything nice so when you're ready and feel happy and comfortable you can after 40 minutes with michelle catherine is starting to gain in confidence and beginning to whisper 18 wow what she knew that i was going to accept her non-verbal communication and her sounds she was far more relaxed and it's reducing that anxiety that is the biggest pressure for her over the next few months michelle will work with catherine to help her overcome her anxieties so that one day she can find her voice in front of her fellow classmates to overcome her anxiety at school about speaking six-year-old catherine relies on sign language it was an issue developed for down syndrome children but obviously it's brilliant for catherine as well because it's a way that she knows she can communicate with with other people these emotional issues are so ingrained that michelle the speech and language therapist will be working with her three times a week we don't know which way she will go today it's obviously only the second time we've been in the school environment together she might talk but the most important thing is to reassure her that we're not going to make her talk mom sarah has come along to help with the therapy session catherine is taken out of her large classroom to go to a smaller more intimate and quiet space to make her feel safe in a little room yeah i'm gonna leave you a mummy playing some games and then while you're playing i'll just nip in and put it on the table can you remember how to play it brilliant thank you see you in a bit [Laughter] that's the mummy seal there's the mummy series and keep talking with mum ah that's that bit this is the first time katherine's spoken in school so this is a big step for kevin it is indeed a big step but the real test will be whether catherine continues to talk out loud once michelle enters the room found the dragon game ah fantastic where does that piece go catherine not that ah perfect thank you very much what's [Laughter] mummy can't do this very well i've just got to knit to the loo is that okay if i go and i'll be back in one minute is that all right baby bubbles they're lovely isn't it great i know it's only one thing that she's done but it's a massive thing that she's done and if she can do that in one step what else can she achieve success catherine spoke out loud in school for the first time but the real challenge will come when she leaves the comfort of the small room and faces her own classroom complete with 30 noisy children as they await their next doctor's appointment adam's family have come away for the weekend he hasn't got to wake up and put his school uniform which immediately changes his mood because he knows he's going to school he's not really into routine and the less people here the better because it doesn't it doesn't like people around us this is adam this is how adam would be just hearing him laugh because sometimes he goes through really long periods where he doesn't laugh and you think what are you thinking pay a million pounds to spend half a day inside his head just to see what he's thinking you can't be happy unless your child's happy i mean i'm supposed to be able to read my child like a book i'm supposed to pick up on facial expressions but sometimes there isn't anything there's nothing behind his eyes sometimes he's staring but he's not you don't know if he's thinking or what he's thinking and you want to just go in and take whatever it is out and put a load of happiness in [Music] following her discovery that henry's particularly sensitive to massage around his neck and jawline mums made contact with a dentist who offers a pioneering new treatment for tourette's sufferers in the uk it's very new it's not particularly liked by the neurologists but anything's worth a try well this one seems to make the most sense [Music] but i'm not too sure about it this is henry's third visit to dr andre hedger and so far has cost emma over ten thousand pounds hello hi hello henry how are you good thank you nice to see you hi henry's been wearing a brace to create a space between his jaw and skull dr hedger hopes this will relieve the pressure on the nerves that create the spasms what happens in a tourette's pace is that the lower jaw is is pushed too far back it's not in the correct place so what we're doing quite simply is making the upper jaw wider and more forwards and by releasing the jaw joint we stop pressure squashing the nerves that's making his brain fire in the strange way that it does in tourette's that's the eyes the shoulders the flicking and the barking and the coughing or spitting or swearing and it's that simple open mind clicking there did you hear that click i don't think we had that at the start no that's really good signs now open mind the sign of the clicking opening means that the jaw joint is unraveling one of the things we're going to see is just measure how wide you can open so give us your maximum please wide as possible 51 millimeters and he started at 44. he'll be making more noise soon so to make it wider we're just going to widen this a little bit right and then that will be you happy bunny after three months the brace has yet to improve henry's symptoms but it remains his only real hope to help reduce his ticks back at home the family is relaxing but tourette's is never far from their minds it's just tourette's tick good day bad day phone the school phone the doctor phone the therapist yeah it's it's constant it's day in day out you don't wake up without tourette's having seen him going through it for the last 12 months is a bit shocking but i love him and he's my brother and you just gotta deal with the fact that he's got tourette's oh my god very proud of henry because people around him having a totally different view of him you know to adapt to that it's just it's amazing as much as henry tries to adapt he's not always in the party mood fans oh no the hot tub actually the hot tub actually flicks you off doesn't it well i think well it's been a long time since you give it another go but so um to be fair he he has so much to deal with can you imagine the energy it takes to deal with his life from the minute he wakes up to the minute he goes to bed i can't imagine that who knows what makes tourette's sufferers tick two weeks since their first visit adam and his mum are back at the priory to meet with dr faiza khan and her team today they're going to do a series of tests which will evaluate his levels of engagement and interaction i'll do that understand we'll start with something very very easy what i want you to do is fit these to this design whichever way you like and you can ask me more this task is to evaluate adam's logical thought processes well done now dr khan wants to see how adam illustrates his imagination giving him an example of a story using five random items and he thought it was too hot so then he went oh so he went to get some ice cream and then came back and sat on the bread yeah so it's your chance to pick five things out of this [Music] so what's happening now bouncing after working with adam for two hours dr khan and her colleague confer on their findings we have gone through the clinical history and we have done the [ __ ] assessment and the diagnosis for adam clinical diagnosis is autism he did not use any imagination he was using the objects as they were quite literally and like the car was car it was bouncing over you know planet i've done that with him for years i used to get silly things like the inside tube of a toilet roll and draw wings on it and let's play a plane and he'd look at me as if to say that's not a plane it's a toilet roll he gets frustrated and angry very easily because he doesn't understand the feelings of others or anything you know which is reciprocal in terms of interaction i don't know how you feel about it it's the first time somebody's actually sat there in front of me and said yes i think it is autistic spectrum disorder years ago when it first started i got told he can't be autistic because he's good in school and and how is he with routine also well he doesn't really like routine he can't be autistic then do you know what i mean it was like if he doesn't take that box then it's not that yeah i i stand by with my clinical judgment on that after eight long years charlotte has finally got her diagnosis [Music] absolutely my best day since i started worrying about him hey yeah brilliant want to just cry and scream and hug her autism is a spectrum ranging from very severe end severely autistic to high functioning with no speech and language problems which is asperger's so in adam's case actually the differentiation is that he's not asperger's which would have been high functioning his needs are more like a child with autism to have this diagnosis makes a significant difference first of all for adam to understand that he has some impairments so it's not that that he it's his fault secondly for the parents that they're not just bad parents or it's not that they have done something wrong it helps everybody to understand him in a better way actually i think it's as much about i've been heard and adam's been heard he's a fantastic boy and it's just going to get better and better and better and better isn't it [Music] it's been a month since catherine started working with michelle the speech and language therapist to combat her anxieties about speaking in school today michelle wants to really challenge catherine we're changing the environment so we're moving from our safe base and we're going into the empty classroom whilst her classmates are away catherine will be encouraged to firstly interact with just her support teacher and best friend emma and then see what happens when the rest of the class come back from break she's today mum is not taking an active part in the therapy but is observing in the hope she catches a glimpse of her daughter speaking i'm just here because i want to know how it goes today this is a massive step it's a big day and i'm a mom i just i just want to be here and see what happens it does come on it does normally come off like this [Music] [Laughter] catherine it's a big big move in a really positive direction and get some monkeys okay and then put them on how many monkeys and you can hold hands that's it i would like catherine to be able to do the things she wants to do and not feel as though something is holding her back and i think just having a bit of confidence in her ability will make her ability better you're gonna put it over there okay oh well done wow she's got it on with a hand oh can i have one yellow gorilla a monkey can you find a yellow one [Music] do you want to put it away cafe do you want to put this away you need to find your clothes and then you can come with me and we'll go and get you changed ready for school when they came back from break she did stop talking when they all came in and they all wanted to see what the game was and what it was like what they were doing and what they had to do you probably can't say when it when it will happen it's just in catherine's time on how catherine feels about the next step and the next step after that and the next step after that and and i feel like i need to help her focus on what that next step is and just that next step yeah so let's see who's going to come and choose to the first person just so that you know catherine has definitely started doing more talking at school she's been talking in the playground and she's been talking in the corridor and she said to me that she's happy talking at school now she seems as though she's realizing that it doesn't cause anything bad to happen right mini drum rolls she's come a long way in a short time and with continued support from michelle catherine will expand the number of children she can talk to we need to increase those friends yes so she needs to maybe identify someone else that she could play with so maybe i could help by asking her to think who would she like yeah yeah ideally we need four okay thomas that's the person that she is but she also knows that she's the only one like that in her class i don't know how long she's going to accept that for at what point is she going to say to us what did you do to help me yeah when is she going when is she going to say that like selective mutism there's no quick fix for tourette's it's been four months since henry's brace was fitted and it's not yet stopped the ticking before he had the tourettes he was fit he was slimmer he had a couple of girls interested i think his brain was very sharp he was an a-star student life was going his way and he got really cross for a couple of weeks to the point actually i was quite worried occasionally i just hit her low we're just sitting on my bed just thinking why why is it just happened why is this why is it doing to history i've given up looking for like relationships since god toured just mainly because it's just so hard could stop tomorrow because something like 20 years because for never so yeah we've never said henry will be cured of it and i do think that henry will have a tick of some sort throughout his adult life as particularly at times maybe of anxiety or stress thankfully music is the one thing that does relieve some of the ticking and tonight henry's band is topping the bill at a tourette's fundraiser oh music is a big help because it just keeps the ticks down just keeps me happy it's what i like doing so it just keeps me a bit more sane in life in my crazy life and it's a bit odd but i just couldn't imagine my life about ticks anymore [Applause] it might take and make people laugh he's definitely a bit of a special person but they're just a normal casual guy [Applause] sometimes we're going to school saying oh new day new year ticking is great but most times just like oh happy yeah i just love it when i look at henry now i am hugely proud he has gotten over so much in a year she says people can laugh with me not at me and i think with that attitude there's not many people laugh at him [Music] [Applause] feels like the battle's over but we know that tomorrow morning he'll wake up he's still got tourette's but tonight that feels fantastic [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Real Families

Views: 265,374

Rating: 4.9140668 out of 5

Keywords: Real Families, Documentaries, Full Documentary, My Child Has Selective Mutism |, How do you help a child with selective mutism?, My Child's Not Perfect, my child''s not perfect full epiosdes, tourette syndrone in children, adhd help, adhd help without medication, adhd healing frequency, adhd healing, selective mutism in adulthood, selective mutism in children, selective mutism treatment

Id: Sef4tMdgcpQ

Length: 45min 19sec (2719 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020