Communication with a Non-Verbal Child

This Study is an attempt to clarify the meanings of a child's silent periods during therapeutic sessions. The six school children presented characteristically by-passed speech as a means of communication even when the therapist tried to elicit verbal responses. Too often therapists have associated silence with guardedness, suspiciousness, withholding, daydreams, and death. To these possible meanings the therapist may respond by withholding herself.

Silence as a deeply entrenched response suggests an early onset, probably the period of infancy. The early use of silence as an adaptational phenomenon was seen in all of the children. One girl, age 10, was silent for 168 sessions extending over three years, in spite of the fact that she used speech remarkably well with her peers from the ninth session on.

At interview, the symptom picture presented by those who referred these children was quite varied. It included such phenomena as bathroom phobia at school, school phobia associated with religious rebellion, immobilization to the point where the child would not take a step or say a word when she found herself noticed by an adult, clinging, violent temper tantrums persisting at age nine, severe mood swings, sex play, daytime enuresis, reading retardation, skin disorders, functional deafness, and daydreams. The silence of these children antedated the other symptoms, but was not noted by the parents. Frequently it was the teacher or otolaryngologist rather than the parent who noticed the lack of a concept of words. Only one of the parents maintained attendance at the clinic even though parent cooperation was urged, and this parent withdrew the child prematurely. One child insisted that its mother not be interviewed beyond the first contact and firmly adhered to this position for all of the 22 sessions. These children did not look to their parents as a help in speech—in fact, quite the opposite. The child's silence was useful to the family as well as to the child.

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