The thing I like most about our book club is that you do not write a review of the book, but must write a post about what the book makes you think about.  As soon as Annie Walsh’s brother, Calder, was introduced, within the first dozen pages or so, I had my inspiration.  I caught on right away that something was not “right” with Calder, as the author and Annie noted his tics, and that they had started again.

Tourette’s Syndrome.  My son has had it since he was two and a half years old.  Yes, you read that right, two and a half.  There is a family history of mental illness, including OCD. Males are affected three to four times more often than females.  And after extensive trauma in his life and being bullied by his former friend in daycare (yes, bullied), my son was a trussed up target for Tourette’s.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw it.  Tyler kept blinking his eyes, hyper-blinking.  I thought at first “allergies”, but he had no other symptoms.  We then took him to an opthamologist who prounounced his vision better than most toddlers his age.  We were baffled.

But then we began to notice sniffing, throat clearing, heavy breathing and yawning.  I called the pediatric nurse a couple of times in a panic only to be told if my son was having trouble breathing he would be “laying like a wet towel on the couch.”  Tyler was not only NOT sitting around, in fact, the blinking, sniffing, coughing, etc. seemed to get worse when he was active.

Finally at three-years-old, a Pediatric Neurologist diagnosed my child with Tourette’s, along with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  I did not want to believe it; just because my three-year-old put together a puzzle in a certain way, he had OCD??  Maybe he was just smart!

But sure enough, the OCD has also manifested itself in my son.

I think in my child’s five years of life, the worst time with the Tourette’s was when he started coughing uncontrollably when we would try to put him in his “big boy” bed.  Tyler was so scared about being left alone in a room (and STILL is) that he would begin to cough.  “I can’t stop coughing,” he would tell me, and I would try to rub his back to soothe his anxiety. Finally, after this going on for a couple of weeks and him not being able to sleep, every night to midnight or one ‘o clock, I took him to bed with me, where, being with his Mommy, he was finally able to stop tic-ing and rest peacefully.

Between sleeping in a sleeping bag by my bed and being in bed with me, Tyler spent almost two years in my room, with Grant forced to sleep on the couch.

A lot of mothers said it was the wrong thing to do, but I say until you live it, until you helplessly watch your child cough so much he can hardly breathe, then you can tell ME what I should do.

And now he has come to the age where he realizes that sleeping with Mommy is not the right thing to do.  He is still too scared and anxious to sleep alone in his own room and so he has graduated to the love seat, where Grant still sleeps on the couch.  Someday I believe I WILL have my husband back!

With Tyler’s form of Tourette’s, he is mostly able to hold back his tics during the school day. As soon as Grant would pick him up from pre-school he would start to tic.  Like many children with Tourette’s, he feels comfortable enough with Grant and I to “let loose”.  He has only been in kindergarten for a few weeks but even through pre-school, the Tourette’s never affected him “academically”.

At Tyler’s age, it is common for the tics to wax and wane, and for many months now, except for a few weeks when he was very nervous about starting kindergarten, we have noticed few tics.  It is indeed possible that he does not have true Tourette’s; that this is just developmental, and that he could stop tic-ing altogether.

But I can’t help wondering…will he be able to make something of himself like Calder was able to in Carry Yourself Back to Me, or will his Tourette’s lead him to trouble, like it also does with Calder?  I worry about him being teased in school.  I have heard all of the great success stories of kids who had Tourette’s and grew up to be extremely successful and then I have heard the stories of kids who fall in to drugs, get in to trouble with the law, and wind up living with their parents in their adult years, unable to even get a job.

As a parent, all I can do is to do my best to educate myself, to observe, and give Tyler the help he needs.  At this time Grant and I are looking for a child psychologist for him.

And I can love him…

and…

Wait.

Myths About Tourette’s Syndrome                                                                                                             

The post Wondering About My Son’s Future first appeared on Mama Sick.

This summer, you may remember, after Tylers preschool graduation, we decided to take him out of the school and enroll him in some of the summer camps offered to us by our school district.

The first camp was called Kinder Fun but it was more like You know how you were coddled every day of your life in daycare?  Them days are over, kid.  You are in kindergarten now, you are in public school and its time to kiss your pansy, fancy, sweet private school goodbye.

Tyler: An Innocent, Unsuspecting Kindergartner

The first day of camp was in June, the Monday after graduation.  In traditional daycare fashion, I stuffed a change of clothes, sunblock, hand sanitizer and some other stuff I cant remember now, along with the required snack and water in the backpack.  Yes, I know camp was only three hours a day, but you never know; my kid, especially in a new surrounding, may forget where the bathroom is, as would many, am I right?

On the first day I was allowed to set him up in his very own cubby.  Tyler was perfectly happy so I beat it out of there quick.  On the second day, I was not even allowed to come into the room!

Weve got him now, Mrs. Cullen, hell be okay, he knows where his cubby is.  Well see you later.

When I picked him up on the second day they had formed a sort of roll call.  The moms or other caregivers had to line up at exactly 12:00 and two by two they called the kids.  Olivia? Tyler?  Come and get your stuff, your moms are here to pick you up.

I looked in and saw all the children seated in a square, sitting as perfectly still as Stepford children. How did they do that?  Tyler went to his cubby and gamely tried to walk with his stuffed backpack. As he started to fall over, I rushed to help him, and his teacher, whom I will now refer to as Mrs. Drillsergeant, said to me Thats okay, Mama, he can do it himself, he has to learn to be independent from you.

Excuse me, maam, I said.  But my son CANNOT carry his backpack, it is too heavy, he needs some help.  

Mrs. Drillsergeant looked at Tyler teetering and grabbed his backpack for him and handed it to me.  I told her I would try to thin out the backpack as much as possible so that he would be able to carry it on his own.

The rest of the two weeks was uneventful.  Tyler studied the Everything You Never Needed to Know About a Bug and Will Never Use the Rest of Your Life unit.

Mommy!  Did you know that bugs have a Thorax and an Abdomen?

No honey, Mommy did not know that!  That is so cool!

In fact, I dont think I ever studied the body parts of a bug throughout my years of elementary, high school and college education!  I hate bugs!

At the end of camp I asked Tyler how he liked learning all about bugs as during the two weeks he brought home cutouts of a bee, a lady bug made out of a paper plate and a butterfly held together with a clothespin.  His major project was an entire book about bugs. To which he replied to me, I dont like bugs.

The next camp that took place about three weeks later was Sports Camp, a week long camp where Tyler would learn the basics of soccer, basketball and floor hockey.  I have to say it was actually a pretty neat thing.

We did, however, have two incidents. Yes, two, in the one week of Sports Camp.  On Wednesday, the teacher said to me, Tyler had a little accident, he didnt quite make it to the bathroom on time so he got a little wet.  He pulled down his pants to show me and I was like No Thank You, I Dont Need To See That!  She presented his underwear to me in a baggie as if it was some sort of Hazardous Waste material.

But he had an entire change of clothes including sneakers in his back pack! I protested.  She just looked at me with a blank stare.

On the last day of Sports Camp, the teacher was waiting to talk to me.

Tyler had a little problem today, she began to say.

Oh, God, what did he do? I am thinking.  Did he beat someone up?  Kick a teacher?

Tyler is going to have to learn that we dont go around kissing children, or things in kindergarten.

Thats it?  Thats the big trouble?  My kid might have kissed a little girl…or a hockey stick?

Mrs. Cullen, you need to talk to Tyler about his behavior because I will tell you, that sort of thing is not allowed in kindergarten and if it continues we are going to have a real problem here.

I guess those Halcyon days of pre-school, when Tyler had a steady girlfriend since the age of three, were over.

Grant and I did talk to Tyler but what were we going to do to him?  Was a sexual assault report going to be filed by the girl in question, or the hockey stick?  We just told him that it is okay to kiss girls but not in school any more and that you never kiss a girl who does not want to be kissed.  How much could I talk to my child about how wrong it is to do something when he was just being a normal little boy?

Three weeks after that (which is now two weeks ago) Tyler had his final camp, called Kinder Prep. This was it, kindergarten boot camp.  He had Mrs. Drillsergeant again for his teacher. One day on the car ride home from camp Tyler said, Guess what, Mommy?  

What, baby?

My teacher is really a man and she kills other men!

Tyler!  Your teacher is most certainly a woman!  She is married and she has children!

No, she is a man.

Tyler…Mrs. Drillsergeant  just has short curly gray hair, and she is older.  Sometimes, some women can look a bit like a man when they get older but I can assure you that your teacher is definitely a woman.  

On Thursday when I picked him up from camp Mrs. Drillsergeant and the camp nurse were waiting to see me.  I was panic-stricken, but I saw that my child was upright with no bruises or bleeding.

Tyler had a meltdown today, Mrs. Drillsergeant told me.  He was in line waiting to use a toy and he got upset because he didnt want to wait any longer.  When I told him he would have to wait some more, he became hysterical.  I had to call the nurse because I could not get him to stop crying, he told me he could not stop and then all of a sudden as the nurse and I are looking through Tylers medical file, he switched it off and was totally fine.  My question to you is, What do you do when he does this at home, how do you stop it?  I also have to tell you, Mrs. Cullen, that I am going to have 23 children in my classroom and that if Tyler cannot wait for something NOW with just 10 children in camp, he is never going to be able to wait, and we do a lot of waiting here, and this IS a full-time school day.

I was stunned.  I wanted to beat up Mrs. Driilsergeant and the school nurse with their looks of concern and hug my child and never let go.  Why the Hell hadn’t they called me?

He-he-he…doesn’t do this at home.  The only time I could think of where he did have an incident like this was when he fell in the hospital on his hurt arm.  He couldn’t stop crying, he was so traumatized and then it became almost an Anxiety-Tourette’s-OCD type of thing where he literally could not stop crying.

I also mentioned that Tyler did not have a good night’s sleep last night and that could have been a factor as well.

Well, you need to teach Tyler how to wait his turn.  I know he is an only child but you are going to have to set up scenarios in which he will have to wait, like take him to the grocery store and he will wait at the check-out line with you.  

Umm, I rarely go to the grocery store because I cannot walk and taking Tyler to any store is just as hard as taking him to an amusement park for me.

Also, I know it is summer time, but you need to get Tyler on a school schedule.  Bedtime at 8:00 and then up at whenever he needs to be able to get to school on time.  

8:00 bedtime?  I can count on one hand how many times Tyler has fallen asleep by 8:00.  I consider it a victory if he is asleep by 9:30.  The kid never sleeps, not even when I was pregnant with him.  The pediatricians have always said that the amount of sleep that Tyler gets, while on the low side, is still within the normal required amount of sleep for children at whatever age he has been.

You have two more weeks.  Start him on a schedule now.  Make up waiting and patience exercises.  I’ll see you both tomorrow.

As I drove home, peering at my exhausted child in the rearview mirror and realizing what he had been through today…was I going to punish him?  Have a BIG TALK with him?  Tyler has Tourette’s, Anxiety, OCD, Depression and some sensory processing issues.  He had just been TORTURED!  

I took him to McDonald’s and got him a Smurf.

Last Friday night I was on my computer and an email came over.  “Your child’s teacher assignment”, along with lots of other information.  Excitedly I opened up the email and guess who will be teaching my child as he begins his elementary school career?  Yep, Mrs. Drillsergeant.  Being the oldest of the kindergarten teachers, apparently she is allowed to hand pick whom she wants in her class.

And she wants Tyler.  My baby.  I am going to try to believe and pray that she picked him, not because she wishes to tame my beautiful, wild-child, but that she wants to help him get on the road to succeeding in school, despite his disabilities.

But for the first time, now from a mother’s perspective, I get the problems of a public school education, and I understand those who have said no to it and decided to teach their children themselves.

Well, it’s only kindergarten.  I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Ah, school may look fun now, but JUST YOU WAIT!

The post Tuesdays With Tyler: You’re in the Army Now first appeared on Mama Sick.

When Grant brought Tyler home he told me that Tyler was complaining about his right arm. He was holding it funny, not using it and not letting us even near him.  Grant said that when he picked him up he was fine so he thought that Tyler was laying it on a little thick.

I remembered back to the time when I was seven years old and had broken my arm.  I did everything I could to tell my parents that I was “fine” and that it didn’t hurt any more.  I was scared to death of going to a hospital!  I kept saying to Grant that Tyler wasn’t faking.  He stupidly threw a stuffed animal at Tyler to see if he would catch it and instead it just hit him!  Idiot!  That’s Grant I’m talking about.

I called the pediatrician and he thought we should go to the E.R. to have it x-rayed.  We packed up Tyler’s beloved Eeyore, snacks, and books and headed out.  There is only one hospital in our area that takes Tyler’s Family Care (poor people) insurance, and it is supposed to have a good reputation.

Tyler was doing pretty well, he told the admitting nurse that they had been running a race but that “wasn’t such a good idea”, that he was a “special boy” and that he was “very funny”.  We told the nurse that Tyler has Tourette’s Syndrome, OCD and Anxiety but was otherwise healthy.  She examined Tyler’s arm and said the doctor would want to pinpoint the exact pain so they would have to not have to give him excess radiation.  Hmm, I must be a walking x-ray by now.

He got a bed pretty quickly.  The first thing that happened was a doctor came over to us and said, “Okay, let’s see, now your name is Rupert, you are six-years-old and you have something wrong with your stomach?”  Wrong kid! The doctor exited gracefully.  Maybe we should have left then?

The nurse gave Tyler some ibupropen which mostly came out of Tyler’s mouth and dribbled down his hospital gown and the bed.  After a while it was time to go to x-ray.  Now, I clearly had my cane, but the stupid nursing assistant, this beautiful, blonde, Nordic ice princess says, “Now Mama, you carry him to x-ray.”  I looked at Grant, “I can’t carry him!”, so Grant did.

Your would have thought we were taking Tyler to the electric chair, he screamed and wiggled so much, plus his arm was hurting.  Grants pants, perfect timing, started to fall down and some stranger says, “I got it buddy, I got it” and pulls his pants up for him.  We decided Tyler should walk.

So he’s walking, doing okay and he trips over…air…and falls, ON HIS ARM.  Tyler and I simultaneously start screaming and crying.  An orthopedic doctor saw the fall and said, “This child doesn’t go anywhere any more without a stretcher or wheelchair!”  The dumb-ass nurse’s aid says, “It wasn’t MY fault!”  I wanted to smack her. Tyler is almost in shock.  “I-I c-c-can’t s-stop crying”, he kept saying.

Grant at this point is livid.  He wants to see the patient advocate, he’s talking filing complaints and lawsuits.  How do you allow a little boy to be carried and then walk to the X-ray, when he is scared, medicated, tired and in pain?! Who just walks to the x-ray room anyway?!

Tyler and Grant finally get into x-ray, where now they have to take like 20 x-rays, to make sure he has not broken any other part of his arm after the fall.  So much for radiation caution.

It turned out that Tyler has a broken elbow.  They splinted it and put his arm in a sling.  We have to see an orthopedic surgeon in a few days for more x-rays, and then maybe a cast.  No school for Tyler for at least two days. As they are doing the splint, the dumb-ass nurse’s aid is ON HER KNEES apologizing to me, telling me that it is standard procedure for the mama to carry the child to x-ray.  A social worker was there too.  I said, “You know, I don’t think this is such a great procedure, PLUS I told you my son had Tourette’s Syndrome, OCD and Anxiety.  He didn’t need any more trauma!”

More profuse apologizing from doctor’s, janitors, the social worker, and all the crappy orange juice we could drink.  They fast tracked us out of there and we brought Tyler home, where he went to sleep about 1:30 this morning.

Grant and I were known as “accident-prone” kids.  Tyler, unfortunately has started earlier in the broken bone department than the both of us.

The post Little Man Down! first appeared on Mama Sick.