Squirrel stories: Helping individuals

4-year-old Oscar is a Squirrel in Liverpool, who has selective mutism. Selective mutism's an anxiety disorder that affects your voice.

Oscar often ‘freezes’ when speaking with people he’s not familiar with. Oscar’s anxiety and ability to speak depends on how well he knows someone. He can completely freeze and go mute, use nonverbal communication (such as a ‘thumbs up’), whisper to his mum, or be able to speak.

Selective mutism's treated by speech and language therapy. The therapy helps people close to the young person learn lots of strategies, which help them become less anxious in social situations.

Going to Squirrels has greatly helped Oscar. His parents talked with his leader when he first joined.

They took on board some of Oscar’s cues, such as using closed questions. This meant it took the pressure off Oscar speaking to answer. He could shake or nod his head to answer with ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or everyone could answer the questions using hands up.

Oscar’s dad believes Squirrels is a valuable environment where Oscar doesn’t feel pressured to answer questions.

Oscar gets to spend time with children his own age, and enjoying Squirrels helps distract him from his anxiety. His favourite part of Squirrels is being rewarded with badges!

Typically, young people with selective mutism will find a way of getting out of social situations. However, Oscar enthusiastically talks about Squirrels and can’t wait to go each week. Even in his recent nursery report, his teacher highlighted that Oscar loves telling people how much fun he has at Squirrels.

We’re so pleased that Squirrels has been such a welcoming and positive environment for Oscar.