Brave Steps: How to Build a Talking Ladder for Selective Mutism

There's a moment in the selective mutism journey where lowering anxiety isn't enough anymore. I hit that last year. We had been really successful with lowering anxiety and started some initial interventions and we hit a bit of a rut. This is when I started to look at the Selective Mutism Talking Ladder, from the US framework. It is the concept of building up towards full speech with little rungs on a ladder. It is a little more directive than most UK approaches, in that you are talking to your child about the ladder. I felt like my child was ready. We had already spent 8 months reducing anxiety, and wanting non verbal communication emerge, but in that, something had stagnated. Those around her had accepted that she didn't talk. Everyone adapted to it, and I didn't want her locked in silence forever. This is where the UK framework didn't offer enough tools for me anymore - the only tools being shaping and Sliding In, but the US frameworks offered more tools for where we were.

The frameworks behind the approach

The ladder approach I ended up designing draws on two established frameworks that parents and professionals in the UK and US are most likely to encounter.

Maggie Johnson's sliding-in technique is the dominant UK approach and it's really proven to work. God bless Maggie! The idea is that you start with a context where the child can already speak freely, then very gradually slide new people or environments into that context — so gradually that the child's nervous system doesn't register the change as a threat. The steps are relatively large and spaced out. It's effective, but it can feel slow. It also does not recognise whispering as progress. It also fell down for us because it needs a huge space, and huge committment from the school. My small London school squashed into a tiny location just didn't have a free room until the summer term and I wanted to start asap. Enter the US framework.

The US framework (used by specialists including those at the Selective Mutism Group) tends to work with smaller, more granular rungs between the bigger steps — more incremental movement, more structured language around what each step involves, more explicit scaffolding for the child about what they're working towards. It specifically recognises whispering as progress. Something else that I love about the US approach, is an expectation and language around 'brave talking' and coming through it. It offers a little more in terms of tooling and language to talk to your child about it.

What I'm doing with Phoebe is a deliberate hybrid of both. Maggie Johnson's architecture for gradiated exposure. Then the US framework's smaller in-between rungs and language techniques to fill the gaps. I combined them, with the help of my AI tool, because that's what fitted our school, our child, and what was practically possible for us.

Phoebe has actually designed her own ladder. She will start with whispering to peers at home on playdates. Then whispering to her teacher when I am there. She told me when she is ready she will use a small voice with peers at home, then a louder voice. She is working her way up her ladder at the moment, and got a sticker today for brave talking on a playdate.

All of these frameworks, the research behind them, and the language techniques are built into SM Pocket Coach — and it's through this tool that I have designed my daughter's intervention strategies, so if you want help applying this to your specific child and situation, that's exactly what it's there for. I've compiled all the information so that you don't have to.

The non-negotiable: anxiety first

Before any of this work started, we had to lay the right foundation and that was removing anxiety. When a child is anxious they are engaging the part of their brain that has them in fight or flight mode, and they simply can't relax and engage in the process. It's really important to start with lowering anxiety.

For us that meant eight months of doing almost nothing interventional, letting Phoebe become settled and comfortable in her school setting before we asked anything new of her nervous system. It started with mornings only, then mornings + lunch, then full days at pre-school. Working closely with the nursery team, and supported by daily 1-2-1s with the most wonderful lady from Learning Support who engaged her through her interests and there was never any pressure to talk. In those months, she learned to feel safe.

Then came the toilet ladder — which was its own separate piece of work, and which I dealt with before starting any talking intervention because it was all-consuming and I was still trying to work full time as well.

By the time we started the talking ladder, Phoebe was smiling at school. She was making friends, non-verbally but genuinely. The ground was ready and to be honest I just had a gut feeling she was ready for me to start this work. Sometimes trusting your gut is more important than anything!

Phase one: practising at home

Before we started with whispering to any friends, her bottom rung of the ladder, we started to practise at home.

At bedtime, I started playing games where I'd pretend to be one of her classmates and put on a squeaky voice. "Hello, what's your favourite doll called?" She'd giggle and whisper the answer. We were rehearsing the emotional experience — the feeling of being asked a question by a peer and surviving it — in the safest possible environment.

The book Bravery Talks was useful during this phase — worth looking up if your child responds well to stories as a way of processing big feelings.

Phase two: the location ladder in school

This is where I am now, and I want to describe it in detail because I think it's the part that's hardest to picture from the outside.

Every day, in the twenty minutes between Phoebe's school day ending and her older sister's day ending, I go into school. We have a window — twenty minutes where I am her bridge, in the building, in school time.

We started in a large, anonymous hallway, with no one paying attention. I bring a book, or Uno, and we just sit there 'waiting' for my other daughter. But each session is planned, often by me saying 'help' into the app, 'what shall we do this time!' Mostly I take a funny book she knows, and read bits wrong until she laughs and then corrects me.

By session three, Phoebe stopped whispering and moved into full voice.

Three sessions. In a school building where she had not produced full voice in over a year. Three sessions in a public space, with the right person, with zero pressure on what she said — and her nervous system decided it was safe enough.

That's neuroplasticity. That's what early intervention can do. The brain is learning that school is a place where her voice is allowed to exist. And what was really powerful was that when she says at home 'I don't talk at school', I can casually say yes you do, you talked yesterday, shrug and move on. It's all planting little seeds.

The progression plan

The hallway is rung one. In a few weeks, we move to a bench outside her classroom. Then, over time, to more and more visible and populated spaces. Each move happens only when she's fully comfortable at the current rung — not on a fixed timetable, on her timetable.

This is the location ladder in practice that I pulled from the US framework, I love how practical it is. You're not changing what she's doing (talking freely with me), you're changing where she's doing it. Until her nervous system has learned that her voice is safe across all of those spaces, and one day without me there it might click. Anyone can come up with a location ladder. It could be the school library, the playground, or it could be outside of school entirely.

Running it alongside playdates

For us, the location ladder and the playdate work are running at the same time. It's a lot to hold. But they're complementary — the location ladder is building safety with her voice in the school environment, and the playdates are building safety with her voice in peer relationships. Different muscles, same gym.

What I'd say to parents thinking about this

This year, I have put my corporate career on hold to be Phoebe's bridge. I go into school a lot. I have committed this entire year to being the trusted person who walks with her up every rung of this ladder, because I believe that what we build in her nervous system now — the neural pathways that say I can speak here, I do speak here — will serve her for the rest of her life.

That is a significant sacrifice. I know it's not possible for every parent. But even a smaller, more irregular version of this approach — bedtime practice, one playdate a month, one familiar location where you let them talk freely and then gradually shift — builds something real.

The research on neuroplasticity is very compelling: the younger the child, the more malleable these pathways are. Early intervention can genuinely reshape how their nervous system responds to speaking situations over time. That's worth fighting for.

And while I take a couple of years outside of my main career, which happens to be corporate comms, I can't help but share what has most helped me, because it has been such a lonely journey. I wish you the best of luck with yours.

The brave steps chart

If you want the brave steps sticker chart I made for Phoebe — the talking version, with rungs you can fill in together — I'll send it to you for free. Click here and I'll send it straight to your inbox.