Tourette Syndrome can present a variety of behavior challenges, often due to the children having difficulty communicating, regulating demands and expectations, and trying to meet their physical and emotional needs.
We’d like to know what you as a parent of a child with TS has experienced. Could you take just a few moments to leave us a comment with the answers to the following questions? We’d really appreciate it, and of course, your answers will better help everyone raise and care for children with Tourette!
- What behavior challenges do you experience?
- Do you know what usually triggers the behavior?
- Do you know what function the behavior serves for the child (what is he communicating or trying to get from the behavior)?
- How are you currently dealing with challenges now? How do you support the child and how to you intervene on the behavior.
Whether you can answer all four of these questions or only the first one, please share with us! Thank you!
I hope I’m not out of line here, but I think these are dumb questions. We know what causes the behavior! The tics! The neurological condition that can’t be controlled! It’s different for every kid, but the cause is still the same. I wish they would just find a cure already so we could all be done with the stupid questions, the long days and the frustration of having a perfectly normal child acting perfectly abnormal. :(
These responses are wonderful. My son is the same in many regards. Unfortunately, he has coprolalia, too, which compounds the problem sometimes. Does anyone who has written commentry here have the same issue?
1. What behavior challenges do you experience? We have an 11 year old boy with TS. We have more behavior problems than tics. His issues are: back talking, a sense of entitlement, retaliation, impulsively grabbing and/or acts like he’s going to punch or hit family members.
2. Do you know what usually triggers the behavior? Hunger triggers defiance and back talking. Frustration triggers impulsive behaviors, but he is always highly impulsive in general except in the mornings, he is very laid back and easy going.
3. Do you know what function the behavior serves for the child ( what he is communicating or trying to get from the behavior?)? When our son is hungry and he gets defiant, I think his sensory issues are heightened, even people without TS can have a hard time handling hunger especially children. I’m not sure about the impulse issues, it seems to be excessive energy that he has to express….it seems very sensory oriented with our son, like he is body just needs to do these actions.
4. How are you currently dealing with the challenges now? How do you support the child and how do you intervene on the behavior? We try to act as his frontal lobe and help him to reason through how his actions affect the other person. Sometimes when he is real revved up, I will grab him from behind and give him a tight hug, it’s like a reset button for him. He is hypo-sensitive.
Rhonda and Joe’s kids sound very similar. I wonder how many more kids like this there are out there.
My son is 13, was diagonsed with TS when he was 7….we struggled for years with agressive and physical abusive outbursts..His tics are mild, mostly facial and mild vocal noises no words and mostly brought on by stress, anxiety and such…learning more an dmore over the years how to cope, calm down, talk to, handle, whatever needed to be done was a struggle but with his therapy and him and i working on it “together”, there has been alot of progress…he has a few things he put together on his own that hlep him when the stress or anxiety of school, sports or everyday frustrations help him..we are doing this together and I could not be more proud of how he has turned himself around….love him more than life…
I can relate. My daughter gets very violent when her tics come on. She hits everything — herself, me, my husband, our dog … it’s terrible. I wish there was a way to stop this.
1) What behavior challenges do you experience? — a lot of yelling and, sadly, cursing accompanies my son’s tics. He still listens the same (not well!), but any time he has his tics, he’s extremely loud and unruly.
2) Do you know what usually triggers the behavior? — like any teenager, if you ask a question (and the tics are present), that particularly sets him off. Also, if he has to think about more than one thing at a time, that’ll do it.
3) Do you know what function the behavior serves for the child (what is he communicating or trying to get from the behavior)? — I’m pretty sure he’s trying to show that he doesn’t want to deal with it or doesn’t understand. Sometimes it’s hard for us to know, though, and that is very frustrating.
4) How are you currently dealing with challenges now? How do you support the child and how to you intervene on the behavior? — well, we try to walk him through the process and calm him down the best we can. Sometimes, though, we just have to let him run his course. When we do that, it sometimes takes longer, but he usually doesn’t have it again (unless a stressful situation presents itself) for a while.
Does anyone else experience challenges like this?
My husband and I have huge challenges with out daughter who has TS. She does have mild tics(thank God mild) but her behavior issues are pretty tough. She acts out in different situations differently but mostly we found food sensitivity to be a major role. Food with dyes makes her outbursts much worse. We’ve tried to limit as much of those food as we can. Also when she’s faced with school work or situations that she’s not in control of she acts out. I jus try my best to stay calm and calm her down as much as possible by staying calm and trying to work through the problem. I would love to hear more on this topic as this is our major issue with her TS and ADHD.