Lily had selective mutism — she had never spoken a lot, and her struggles intensified when she entered preschool. Her family came to the Child Mind Institute for an intensive treatment program called Brave Buddies. Afterwards, her mother said, she talked to more people in a week then she had in her whole life. Selective mutism, or SM, is a condition in which a child who is comfortable talking at home is unable to speak in other, more public settings, including school. You see kids with this anxi