Helping my son grieve the loss of a friend
Two years ago I was walking home with the two of them on either side of me, and Sadie was animatedly telling me about Yannai’s talking progress at school. My son Yannai suffered from Selective Mutism (a speaking anxiety), and his friend Sadie had voluntarily teamed up with the school counselor to help him progress up a “talking ladder.”
“…And our next step,” she explained with determination unseen in an eight-year-old, “is for Yannai to try and speak out loud to a group of five children on the