Hello I have SM & when I was reading up on it when they called it "elective mutism" it said some of the predisposing factors were maternal overprotection and speech disorders & I actually do have a speech disorder and my whole life still to this day my mom is very controlling towards my life and when I showed her the article about SM she said it was bullshit. Anyways even if its no longer called elective mutism do u still think those 2 things can be predisposing factors
I'm not sure. I know that they used to cal it "elective mutism" bcuz they thought the kids were choosing not to speak, but now they know that's not true. And they thought bcuz the mothers were overprotective, they didn't force them to speak when they should have, which is also not true in most cases. But I guess it could be true in some cases. I don't know. I know that usually when they blame the mothers, they're the ones telling people about SM and people don't think it's real and say it's their fault. But even if it wasn't a predisposing factor for you, it could always just be something that doesn't help now. And I think it's definitely possible that your speech disorder affected your SM. What I just started thinking is that maybe some people develop SM more bcuz of the environmental factors(like what you're talking about) and others more bcuz of genetic factors. But I'm not an expert on this, and even the experts haven't figured all of this out yet. So these are just my thoughts. Hopefully they will find answers in their research soon!
-Abby