Nonverbal, selective mutism, mute, and related signs in ASL 

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🙏🏽 TYSM for this!!! My kiddo has selective mutism and I’m learning ASL to make sure she always has a way to communicate.

I recently lost the ability to speak, and for months was struggling with how to refer to myself, as it seems like most ASL resources focus on deaf terminology. Also, as someone who cannot speak and is also autistic,it is difficult to convey that I cannot speak, but am not traditionally non-verbal as in selective mutism. I did not feel comfortable at all in referring to myself as mute, so I started by signing “not speaking” and now usually sign “can’t speak”, so it was nice to see so many palatable options. We use a lot of your videos in one of my sign language classes, so I knew it would be helpful. Thank you!

YES I have selective mutism and I got lots of nonverbal friends, happy to see our signs :D

Another great video and pretty important for people like me, who started dabbling in ASL and quickly see one (probably the "mute") version of "nonverbal" and only use that, when there are many more correct ways to describe someone who just prefers not talking in certain situations.

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I had a mute cat, it took me a while to realize, he communicated through hisses, a very very loving cat. ASL has greatly expanded my own communication options, abilities, it's definitely a superpower~

I love this video. As someone who started losing his hearing only 10 years ago, I can fluently speak English "like a hearing person", but I really, really don't want to talk if I can avoid it. People think it's weird, like I'm just irrationally worried about how I'll sound, but there's a lot of good reasons -- I have a tendency to talk over people because I can't hear them, I can't modulate my volume to the environment, etc. I'll now tell people I'm "nonverbal" or "selectively mute", because those describe me well.

Thank you for clarifying active hearing/ listening vs General hearing. I never knew the difference.

Great lesson, thanks for this. Been so busy lately finally had time to watch it 🤓🙂

I should watch more videos. I have a medical condition that causes me to go mute for a few minutes, several hours, or even days. I know only a bit of sign language, which would be beneficial when I'm unable to speak. This is particularly important when members of the deaf community visit my workplace. I believe it would be considerate to learn some sign language to communicate with them.

Is there a way to say “verbal shutdown”? I’m most likely autistic (waiting on evaluation) and I experience episodes where I’m unable to speak due to stress/overstimulation. I’ve heard that some nonverbal people in the community don’t like when people who can speak sometimes say they’re “going nonverbal” or use “nonverbal” to describe themselves because to them, “nonverbal” should be reserved for those who cannot speak whatsoever. So a newer term I’ve seen lately is “verbal shutdown” which describes a state where someone is unable to speak for a period of time due to overwhelm/overstimulation but can speak at other times. I suppose I could use mute but technically mutism is its own separate condition from what I’ve learned and I don’t think it describes me well.

These are very helpful! Thank you!

nice ASL video I’ve never heard of self mutism it’s good to know

Thank you ..

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