In writing this blog for the past three years, I won’t deny that I have thought from time to time that I should write a book about D, social anxiety, and selective mutism. A couple things always held me back from pursuing this, however. First, while we were living with the mutism and struggling to help D conquer it, there was no ending, and every book needs an ending. Now, with D so happy and confident, and our therapy ending on June 19th, we have our happy ending. We’ve learned so many things about ourselves and our child, and I think those lessons are worth sharing.

The other thing holding me back, however, is D’s privacy. He has told me before in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want me to write about him or his selective mutism. He doesn’t know about this blog and so that alone feels like a gigantic betrayal. I’ve always struggled with the question — is this my story to tell or is it his? So I’ve waited and watched to see if D would ever come around. Recently, I posed the question to him again: How would you feel if I wrote a book about you and your selective mutism? His answer surprised and impressed me. “Okay,” he said, “but only if you change my name.” That I can do. I gave him a hug and told him I was proud of him, as I am every day.

Who knows what, if anything, will come from this new venture? The thought of possibly telling our story in a new public format both exhilarates and terrifies me. As with all things that give us anxiety, it would be so much easier just to not do the thing that scares us. But that’s not what life is all about. It’s not what OUR LIVES are all about. We don’t give in to anxiety, we don’t avoid things we’re scared of. We face them and get past them, and D would be the first person to tell you that.

In February 2010, we started seeing a wonderful child psychologist, Dr. G, because Declan had stopped speaking and had severe social anxiety. We have now made the joint decision with her on when his last session will be, because it is clear that he is absolutely thriving. Every time I think about that upcoming last session, I am torn up. I know it’s time to say goodbye, but it’s also so hard.

You have kids thinking you’re their only parents and then you realize you’re actually just part of a big team bringing them to adulthood. How will I ever thank her?

It’s April 16th, the one day every year that I mourn a monster. Correction: I don’t mourn the monster he became, but the child he once was.

Six years ago today, on a beautiful blue-sky day when my son was still a babe in arms and innocent of this world, Seung-Hui Cho opened fire on his Virginia Tech classmates, killing 32 people and injuring 17 others before turning the gun on himself. Despite the horrors visited upon us before and since, and as recently as yesterday — when terrorist bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, killing three — the Virginia Tech massacre remains the worst mass shooting by a single perpetrator in American history. Seung-Hui Cho, as I’ve written before, suffered from depression, schizophrenia, and selective mutism. To me, he is the horror-movie poster child for what can happen, at the ultimate extreme, when severe social anxiety is ignored and dismissed.

When I’ve written about Cho in the past, people have criticized me for associating selectively mute children with a cold-blooded killer. My response is always the same. I didn’t connect the two things; Cho did that when he pulled the trigger. I think it is dangerous to ignore the fact that Cho’s selective mutism, and people’s responses to it, helped swing the pendulum away from healing and toward madness. How I wish that were not the case.

Six years later, my son is now in elementary school, still largely innocent of this world. But cracks are beginning to appear in the armor. He unexpectedly walked into the room last night as I was watching the news, which was filled with images of the bloody streets of Boston, where the bombs claimed the life of an 8-year-old boy, not much older than my son, and two others.

“What’s that?” my son asked, pointing toward the smoke and chaos on the screen.

“Nothing,” I lied, quickly turning off the television.

“What was it? Tell me!”

“No,” I said firmly. “It’s time for bed.”

He turned and complied, but I know he knows that I’m keeping something from him. He’s old enough to understand that bad things happen in the world. He just doesn’t need to know how bad. Not yet. I wish not ever.

The older I get, and with children of my own, the harder it is to hear about another lost child. “He could be mine,” you think, and it hurts in a deep place. I thought that when Newtown happened. I thought that when I heard about the boy in Boston, innocent of this world, watching a marathon on a beautiful blue-sky day. And I thought that about Cho, when my son was first diagnosed with selective mutism.

“He could be mine.”

And you hold your own child tight, encircling his still-small wrist with your fingers, cradling that innocence like you once cradled him, for just one moment longer.

I am so honored and pleased to have coauthored a piece on selective mutism with Marian Moldan, a licensed clinical social worker and an expert on SM, that was published today on a Psychology Today blog. The post deals with raising awareness about SM in the wake of the Newtown massacre and the possibility that the killer, Adam Lanza, suffered from this affliction.

Dr. Amy Przeworski’s fantastic “Don’t Worry, Mom” blog focuses on anxiety in families, and she generously gave us space on her blog to explore the signs and symptoms of this rare and often misunderstand condition. I am forever grateful to Marian and Amy for their wisdom and generosity!

ATTENTION SM PARENTS: Dr. Przeworski is heading up an online research study about kids with selective mutism, social anxiety, separation anxiety, OCD and other anxieties. If your child suffers from any of these anxiety-related conditions and you’d like to participate in this very worthwhile research and fill out some online questionnaires, please visit this site for more information.

One by one, D is slaying all his old demons. Last week, he had his first-ever swimming lesson. There was a time, not too long ago, when it was all I could do to get D to sit on the step at the shallow edge of a pool with his legs in the water. It wasn’t unusual for us to join friends at a pool and have D’s head and torso remain bone dry the whole time. Putting his head underwater was verboten. He really preferred to hang out in the baby pool with his sister.

But I have been preparing him for the better part of a year that we would do swimming lessons after the holidays. He’s 6 1/2, and it’s time. I told him that, like soccer and tae kwon do and reading, the more he practiced at this, the better he would become. I arranged for a very expensive but very private lesson with a local swimming instructor, knowing that it would be easier for D if no other kids (or adults) were around. I emailed her ahead of time and told her all about D’s history of social anxiety and mutism, to prepare her if he balked or stayed mute. She assured me that they would go as slowly as they needed to.

Imagine my delight on the day of the lesson when D happily said “hello” to his instructor and hopped right into the pool. In one half-hour lesson, he did more than I expected him to do in several lessons. He put his head underwater without holding his nose, he paddled and kicked the entire length of the pool using a board, he blew bubbles underwater, and he floated on his back. At one point, the instructor looked over at me and mouthed the words, “NO FEAR.”

Damn straight. No fear.

In that moment, I felt a pang of sadness and regret over my own childhood, which was riddled with fear and anxiety, and wished my father had had the wherewithal to push me out of the nest the way we’ve been doing with D for the past three years. D has come so far, much farther than I had by his age–or even twice or three times his age. I was so enormously proud of him. Again.

But does that mean the old feelings are completely gone? Not at all. On Monday, he had a dentist appointment, another place he’s had anxiety in the past. Unfortunately, he did not speak, even when spoken to, for the first half-hour we were there. Think about that: Thirty long minutes of silence, even when he was spoken to. Whenever that happens, I feel the gaping black hole in my stomach, the one that’s been stitched closed with only the thinnest of threads, threaten to re-open. As I wrote three years ago, way, way, way back on that earliest, saddest day, when your child doesn’t talk–when they can’t talk–it’s a sad, scary feeling. But I know now to trust in the progress we’ve made. And sure enough, Declan eventually started talking to his hygienist and to the dentist.

The arc of progress is long but positive. We have another swimming lesson tonight.

A few weeks ago, I volunteered to be the “mystery reader” in D’s kindergarten class. Parents do this all school year long, showing up unannounced, and unbeknownst to their child, to read one or two stories to the class. I wasn’t sure how D would react to my presence in the classroom. On one hand, I could see him being excited about it, but I could also see him being embarrassed. D is mercurial, among the many other descriptors I could apply to him. I just hoped for the best.

On my appointed day, I was surprised to arrive to a darkened classroom peopled only by D’s teacher, Mr. McC. Registering my questioning look, Mr. McC said that the kids were all outside at recess but would be returning soon. “When I hear them approaching the class, you can hide in the supply closet and burst out,” he said. Oh boy, I thought. Surprising them was one thing; scaring them, and particularly my sensitive child, by jumping out of a closet was another thing entirely.

Within moments, the kids returned and I ducked into the closet, surrounded by several shelves of Elmer’s glue, construction paper, and small, blunt-edged scissors. I heard Mr. McC tell them to sit on the rug because the mystery reader was coming. From inside the closet, I could hear D’s beautiful voice, chirping in suspense along with his friends. “Who is it?” “It’s my mom!” “No, it’s my mom!”

Finally, on Mr. McC’s cue, I burst out of the closet to a chorus of giggles. I was especially happy to note that D looked positively delighted.

To help counteract any weird feelings on D’s part, I had deliberately chosen to read one of his all-time favorite books: Peace at Last, by Jill Murphy. This is a lovely little book about a father bear who gets the worst night of sleep imaginable. His wife is snoring, his baby boy is pretending to be an airplane, the leaky faucet is dripping. He even tries to sleep in the car, until the sun “peeps in at the window.” On each page, and in the face of each obstacle, Mr. Bear exclaims, “Oh NO! I can’t stand this!”

I asked the class to say it with me each time. “Oh NO!” their little voices roared, getting more lively with repetition. “I can’t stand this!” It was great fun.

After I finished, Mr. McC gave me another book to read about pumpkins, reflecting the season. Then I took questions from the class — about the books, about pumpkins, even about what I was wearing for Halloween — and I was so heartened to see that D was participating just as much as the next child, raising his hand, talking, questioning, laughing.

You see, friends, even though D has been talking for a long time, I don’t think the raw fear of his selectively mute days will ever truly leave me. I’m amazed over and over again at how far he’s come, long after the rest of the world has taken him and his normalcy for granted.

And oh, how far he has come. Overall, D’s had a terrific start to kindergarten, so much so that I can’t quite believe it. When I put him on the bus that first day of school, I felt like every moment of his life, large and small — from his birth to his tiny first diapers, from spitting up and sitting up to preschool and therapy, from playdates to tae kwon do and soccer — had led up to that moment. He was going to school, and he wasn’t mute, and he wasn’t scared. Moreover, he had friends and activities and a desire to be there. In a word, blooming! So much blooming.

But it hasn’t been without struggle. After a high-flying start, D has still faced some acute social-anxiety challenges in the classroom that we’re still working through and that have been highly frustrating at times, for us and for him. Oh NO! I can’t stand this!

Yet, even these lingering challenges are getting slowly better, as all our other challenges have too.

In the book, Mr. Bear finally goes back in the house after his fitful, frustrating night. Mrs. Bear has rolled over and stopped snoring, and Baby Bear has finally fallen asleep. Mr. Bear gets under the covers. “Peace at last,” he yawns to himself, as he closes his eyes.

Then the alarm clock goes off — BRRRRRRRRINNNNGGGGGGG!!! — and it’s time to face another day, with all its demands.

Peace at last. It may only be fleeting, but I’ll take it.

This month has felt like two or three months in one. We had D’s birthday (including two family celebrations and a Lorax-themed birthday party with 14 kids), then D broke his first wooden board and earned a yellow stripe belt in tae kwon do. We had family get-togethers and Eric had a gig and we went to baseball games. And, it must be said, we had lots of growing anxiety about kindergarten, which is starting next week. Something had to give.

So when a friend offered me her family’s beach house at Bethany Beach, Delaware, this week, I couldn’t pass it up. We needed to get away one last time this summer, to reduce all our anxiety and hopefully get some perspective. Eric had to work, so it was just me and the kids, and I wasn’t sure if I would be MORE stressed after being away, ALONE, with two kids for nearly five days. But I wasn’t. That’s not to say it wasn’t tiring, because it was, but it was also glorious. We had simply a magnificent experience. The weather was perfect (most of the time), the beach was empty (most of the time), and the kids were well-behaved (most of the time). No one needs a reminder of how much they love their children, and yet sometimes we get them anyway. That’s what the beach trip did for me. It stripped away a lot of my stress and tension and worry and left only love and fun and gratitude in its place.

At one point, I even had this strong thought: D is going to be fine in kindergarten. He’s going to be FINE. One afternoon, several disparate groups of kids had joined in together to build this massive fort/moat/castle thing in the sand. I could tell that D wanted to join in, but he was feeling shy (note that I said he was “feeling” shy — no one IS shy and should never have that albatross hung on them). After some cajoling from me, he joined them and made new friends, talking and digging and laughing. When a wave threatened their structure, all the boys, including D, yelled “Incoming!” I could hear his laughter all the way up the beach to the chair where I sat, observing.

Sister K stuck close to me, collecting bits of shells in a lovely little pile, and my shoulders relaxed. My son — the anxious one, the selectively mute one, the isolated, introverted one — has come so, so far. I’ve focused so much of this summer, and this month, on his remaining challenges and how they will manifest in kindergarten. As we’ve said to D over the years, I “let my worries get too big.” And it took just a few days of sun and sand and ocean to help me to breathe deeply and see clearly. He’s going to be FINE in kindergarten.

No. He’s going to be GREAT.

All this bore out when we got home from the beach and we went to school for a private meeting with his new teacher, Mr. M., with whom D spoke (after just a few moments of silence) and even played some pickup soccer. Then we had the Open House with all the parents and kids, and D also did great there. He even made two new friends.

Will it be easy putting him on a school bus for the first time on Tuesday? No.

But will we all be okay? Absolutely, unequivocally, yes.

We kind of dread August in our house. We don’t believe much in the Zodiac around here, or numerology or Scientology or any other wacky belief system that people think governs their behavior. But I do believe that the month of August holds a dark spell over us. It happens to be D’s birthday month, and it is also the month before the start of school, so for the past three or four years it has always thrown him (and therefore me) into an emotional tailspin. Last year, the tailspin began well before August and didn’t abate until, oh, about November. But regardless of its length, the emotional epicenter always occurs around D’s birthday. “Why do I have to keep getting older?” he’s pleaded with me before. Birthdays are really hard on him. They represent change and added responsibility and expectations.

So we wondered how this year would go. D’s birthday was last Thursday, and his party (with 14 kids!) was on Saturday, with a spontaneous Washington Nationals baseball game on Sunday thrown in. It was a big four days. How did he do?

Overall, I’m happy to report that he did great. He had a big — okay, ginormous — meltdown on Friday that had me screaming and pulling my hair out by day’s end, but overall, that was it. He had birthday celebrations and salutations at his preschool (where he’s in a summer “camp” session), at tae kwon do, and with friends and family. He was sung to multiple times in multiple circumstances. And he loved it. He was exhausted and a bit cranky at times, but he loved it.

But boy, am I glad that’s over. I’m hoping that D can get on an even keel in these remaining few weeks before he starts kindergarten, and that I can too. It’s only August 6, and I can feel the dog days weighing on me. It’s the birthday thing, but also the anniversary of my dad’s death on August 3rd, and just the uncertainty of our current situation. At the end of July, our wonderful long-term nanny share came to an end, since the family I share her with has no more need for her services (both of those kids will be in elementary school together at last), and D will also be in elementary school and sister K will start preschool at some point too. The problem is that my nanny hasn’t found another position yet. And we haven’t been told when K will start preschool yet (she’s on the waiting list).

So we’re all in this holding pattern. I’ve agreed to keep hiring my nanny on a part-time basis until K starts school, but the uncertainty is hard on my nanny and on me. I’ve also put some classified notices out (as did the other family) about my nanny, and she actually got an interview in the neighborhood on Friday. It looked promising but fell apart over that family’s very rigid views on certain things. When my nanny showed up at our house this morning, she immediately started crying as she told me about it. Naturally, so did I.

The uncertainty remains. I hate uncertainty so much that I will often keep scouring movie reviews UNTIL somebody spoils the ending. I skip ahead a few pages in suspenseful books. My husband knows better than to scare or surprise me. I once was the guest of honor at a surprise baby shower, and Eric literally kept trying to find a way to slip me a Xanax on the way to the party without letting on why, just because he knows me so well. (And by the way, I was fine.) But generally, give me some warning, people. Tell me what’s going to happen.

Pop quiz: Can anyone out there guess where D gets his anxiety?

Unfortunately, life is full of surprises — good and bad — and I have to remind myself that whatever certainty I feel is just an illusion anyway. None of us knows what the future will bring. So, I’m taking some deep breaths. This is my challenge this month. I have to “keep calm and carry on,” as the saying goes. I have to be D’s rock and his reservoir. I have to be kind to my nanny but not take on the entire logistical and psychological burden of ensuring her livelihood and well-being. I have to look at the calendar and remember that the dog days of August will end soon enough. And I have to recognize that this August was better than last August, which was better than the August before that. So maybe this trend will come to an end someday.

Just to be safe, though, I think I’ll spend all of next August on a beach.

I am pleased to report that the original version of my essay on selective mutism has been included in a new textbook called Perspectives on Diseases & Disorders: Speech Disorders. Published by Greenhaven Press, this book is the latest in a series of books for high-school and college-age students, as well as practitioners, about a range of mental, physical, and developmental conditions.

The book, like others in the series, is designed to provoke discussion and includes an article that posits that family dysfunction and trauma are the “causes” of SM (which I DON’T agree with and which the psychiatric profession has largely refuted) and another article that thankfully disputes that point of view. My essay is meant to showcase the “human element” of this disorder, which was my intention in writing it all along!

D has been having an incredible summer, making leaps-and-bounds improvements with his social anxiety, athletic skill, and coordination. But he still has challenges. Today, in his tae kwon do class, he tried to break a board with his bare fist for the first time, which they require all students to do before they move to the next belt level. They’re having a belt ceremony soon, so they’re starting to push the kids out of their comfort zones and practice breaking boards. In class, they use heavy plastic boards that can be re-assembled once they’re broken, but they replicate the size and weight of the wooden boards they have to actually break at the belt ceremony.

At first, working with one instructor, D couldn’t do it. Then a second instructor jumped in to help. Then the third. At this point all the other students had broken their boards and were lined up against the wall, watching D try and fail, try and fail. All eyes were on him, and all the parents in the waiting room looked over at me with sympathetic eyes. D kept looking over at me too, either searching for sympathy, or escape, or wishing I wasn’t there. He kept trying and just not doing it. Finally, I couldn’t take it. I abruptly stood up with sister K and walked out of the studio. I couldn’t watch him undergo that pressure, and I didn’t want him to be tempted to look over at me.

After some time, I came back to the studio. D’s look was inscrutable, even stony. The message seemed clear: He hadn’t broken the board.

Except that he had. After class, he ran over to me and said, “You missed it! I broke the board! And everyone clapped.” I couldn’t have been more thrilled for him. If only every child in the world could always feel what D was feeling in that moment — that there was nothing he couldn’t do, no challenge he couldn’t conquer.

We’ll see what actually happens in a belt ceremony in front of a crowd full of parents and students. But that’s a challenge for another day, and I like to take my challenges one day, or one board, at a time.

(D and his TKD Master meditating — cute, huh?)