It's Not Just the Tics

There's a great pamphlet that I had attached to Liam's 504 Plan called "It's Not Just the Tics". It talks about ways that teacher's should deal with TS in the classroom. One of the biggest issues with TS is that it's always comorbid with a wide variety of other disorders. Liam's diagnosis was strongest in TS and ADHD, but his neurologist says OCD is probably stronger than ADHD. Regardless, I'm always wondering what is related to the TS and what's not. Today the things that were clearly attention/focus issues seem myriad. This morning I asked him to remember that he was being picked up 15 minutes early and he should remember to write down his homework earlier in the day so that he didn't forget anything.

We got to his orthodontist appointment and I said "did you remember to write down your homework?"
The answer was "um, well, I remember what I have to do". After his orthodontist appointment, we drove back to his school and I asked him to take out his planner and we could go write down his assignments. He informed me at that point that he'd forgotten his planner. We went inside and his teacher mentioned that she had also reminded him to go over his list early since I was picking him up early. She asked him if he remembered his social study book, which he needed to do his homework. The answer was of course no.

One of the other frustrating things about tics seems to be that the more the person feels the pressure not to tic, the worse the compulsion to tic seems to be. I always wonder if this actually the TS or the OCD. We went to the grocery store after we went back to Liam's school and I noticed that he was ticking more than usual. Probably because he was upset about school. But he was trying to keep his screaming relatively soft. He told me "Mom, I don't want to be screaming through the supermarket". I told him not to worry about it, that he could scream all he wanted and I wouldn't care at all. He squealed a couple more times, which I completely ignored, and then it stopped.

There are so many kids with TS who have ODD, and depression and anxiety attached to their diagnosis and I sometimes wonder if any of those things were things that got missed or misdiagnosed and am I waiting for one of these things to surface more severely around the corner.