My Son Spoke After Three Years of Silence

My son Marcus was diagnosed with selective mutism at age four. For three years he did not speak a word outside our home — not at school, not at church, not to family members he loved. We worked with therapists, speech pathologists, child psychologists. We made incremental progress but the silence in public remained total. Last spring our church held a healing prayer night and I brought Marcus, not with any particular expectation, just because I wanted him in a community that prayed. A kind older man knelt down to Marcus's level and simply said, "I'm going to ask God to help you find your words." Marcus looked at him. Then he turned to me and said, clearly, in front of everyone: "Mama, I'm okay." It was the first time he had spoken outside our home in three years. I could not breathe. His therapist, when I told her what happened, said she had no clinical explanation for the speed of the shift. He started speaking at school within two weeks. He is now a completely verbal, socially engaged seven-year-old who never stops talking.