The Silence Within: A Teacher/Parent Guide to Working with Selectively Mute and Shy Children [Spiral-bound]

Gail Goetze Kervatt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0615121519 | ISBN-13: 978-0615121512 | Publication Date: January 1999

The Silence Within describes a teacher's experience with a selectively mute child. Also described is the process that followed in the child overcoming the disorder, after five years of being mute in school and all social situations. The book grew out of research and daily notes over a seven month period. It includes quarterly goals, the child’s handwritten weekly goal, daily strategies and activities, resources, references and reproducibles. Order now....Don’t miss out on this valuable and informative resource for teachers, parents, speech and language therapists and guidance counselors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Beyond being a very interesting story, THE SILENCE WITHIN will serve as a useful guidebook to help selectively mute children. -- Pat Mervine, Speech and Language Pathologist, www.speakingofspeech.com

I bought your book several months ago myself. My daughter has FINALLY cracked the "silence".....she began talking spontaneously. -- Gwen, Parent

I now have accurate information to share with teachers. Thanks for keeping such accurate notes and writing the book. -- Beth, Parent

I would highly recommend this book for anyone who needs to give their school more information about SM........Terri -- Terri, Parent, April, 2002

Your book has helped open the teachers'eyes. Thank you for your patience and helpful ideas. -- Betsy, Parent

From the Author

The Silence Within is different than any other publication available in that it is written for teachers, speech therapists, guidance counselors, and parents by a teacher, in a lesson plan format that is familiar to school personnel. I found in my school system that no one was willing to work with this child, due to lack of knowledge or strategies. School is the very place that the child fears the most and my feeling is that school is where an intervention should take place. The lesson plan format in my book is inviting for school personnel to use on a daily basis as an intervention. The strategies described are based on research and have been approved as a sound approach by several authorities on the subject including Matthew Selekman, a national speaker and author on child anxiety, and Dr. Reiner Bahr, author and practitioner. The strategies incorporate cognitive behavior mod, stimulus fading, and shaping.

The goal in writing the book is to provide useful information and strategies to school personnel, parents and clinicians so that this debilitating condition may be overcome.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 65 pages
• Publisher: Gail Kervatt (January 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0615121519
• ISBN-13: 978-0615121512
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #502,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars stunningly disappointing; from a counselor and parent of a SM child, August 10, 2005

By 

James Foley (Wooster OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Silence Within: A Teacher/Parent Guide to Working with Selectively Mute and Shy Children (Spiral-bound)

This book is not a guide at all. It is a review of a single case, and even there it focuses only the interventions of the reading teacher, mentioning but not defining the interventions of teachers, parents, and a private psychologist, or others. The vast majority of the book is padded with weekly intervention sheets which document a school year's worth of a small amount of progress; the bigger leaps in progress took place after the school year ended and again, the keys to this change are not defined. Another portion of the book is some Internet research from early 1999.
This book is well hyped and promoted. By the way, if you do decide to buy it, you can save a lot by buying it from the author's website rather than from Amazon (sorry, Amazon, gotta support the author even if I was disappointed by the book).
Try a combination of language pathology resources (finding many baby steps toward speech) and anxiety treatment resources (it's probably not just shyness or control) and tailor interventions to fit YOUR child, and advocate (getting tired of hearing, "she'll grow out of it"?).

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars didn't work for me, November 6, 2004

By 

Nice Norway (Garza Garcia, Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Silence Within: A Teacher/Parent Guide to Working with Selectively Mute and Shy Children (Spiral-bound)

If your selectively mute child is younger than 6, this book is not for you. I would recomend the 'Relationship Development Intervention' by Steven E. Gutstein to help you. Excellent program which works on young selectively mute children who still have not developed other related phobias to the pathology.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Carla Turnquest, Bahamas, August 24, 2005

By 

Carla Turnquest (Nassau, Bahamas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Silence Within: A Teacher/Parent Guide to Working with Selectively Mute and Shy Children (Spiral-bound)

This book was my first introduction to Selective Mutism. The case history of Nick described my son and our struggles point for point. Without having a caring teacher at the time I was able to implement some of Gails strategy. and I shared this book with a new teacher who was able to follow the very simple and practicle plan for my son. More important than the informtion is this authors' willingness to reach out to everyone who purchases her book. I received a email from the author after bying the book and it has change our lives and open our world to an enormous bundle of information and additional treatment strategies. I recommend this book to every parent with a child with sm. It is a must have for all teachers, as these strategies can be applied with just little effort. This book is for anyone who think that they cannot teach a child with selective Mutism. Just got the supplement, another must have, excellent resource material. Thank you Mrs. Gail Kervatt for showing teachers that they can still make a big difference in the lives of all children.