Ornella Garbani Ballnik
Schweigende Kinder
Formen des Mutismus in der pädagogischen und therapeutischen Praxis
1. Edition 2009
293 pages
ISBN 978-3-525-40201-6
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
plus S&H
Book
Mute children can be a particularly difficult challenge to all educationists and therapists. How to suffer such silence? What feelings does mutism create in others, and what is it trying to tell us? Working without the verbal feedback of the client demands a great deal of perseverance and attentiveness on the part of the therapist to ensure that the dialogue with the child remains intact. This volume emphasises the ability to stage games with the mute child as well as the importance of triads, of mental imagination and the ability to play for the development of communication and socialisation skills in the child. The results of the latest research in educational and developmental psychology are applied. Treating mute children is seen as a process that includes the child´s overall development, the child´s family and the therapeutic relationship. The goal is to understand the child´s silence as part of language in general as well as sometimes an act of communcation. And the goal is to discover the mute child´s particular problems. To this end educational and therapeutic methods are introduced. Besides selective mutism other forms of silence are also treated, such as remaining silence while learning language or in affective disorders.