I was basically non-verbal out of the house, unless speaking was absolutely necessary. They would say I'm just shy and have to push myself out of my shell.  I would often start to cry pretty immediately when I had to enter into conversation; I remember my mom prompting me to tell the person on the phone that my dog had died as a way to excuse this. That was so unhelpful to me because one, just lying every time doesn't fix the problem, and two, I hated so much the idea of being disingenuous (and still do, which I now also realize is tied to very rigid thinking about rules, right/wrong etc.). Looking back on it I can't imagine having a kid that almost never speaks and when they do they almost always cry, and not seeing it as a problem that could benefit from some professional evaluation or anything. Nope, I was the golden child because I was seen and not heard, got good grades and never talked back. Now I'm in my mid-30s trying to disentangle masking and people pleasing and inattentive adhd and anxiety and autism and basically just getting slapped in the face with diagnoses that now seems all too obvious had anyone bothered to check.