Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Had BASC, have report, now what?

We have done very well with a developmental pediatrician-- they have a good understanding of how medical stuff can influence behavior.

LAF - thanks for that first link. It does have a lot of good info and many of the behaviors we've seen at home were described there as well. We were never given any of this kind of information, just told that since the tics weren't affecting his performance in school or life then nothing more needed to be done at that time.

Now to again ponder what road to take from here....

AM tuba - me too. I have had to basically do major research on my own to figure out the other stuff. My son's pediatrician just said lots of kids have tics they grow out of them. Not until my son wouldn't go into any room in our house by himself, and stopped wanting to do anything outside the house (wouldn't go to day camp with his best friend for instance) and started getting picked on in school did I realize something was off and I had to do something immediately. On the advice of a friend who had a gifted child (and his who teacher thought he was gifted) I took him to an educational consultant and she tested him and found him to be HG. However she just dismissed all the other stuff by saying he's highly gifted, that's how they all are, just ignore it. But I couldn't because he wouldn't go in his room by himself. I took him to a psych who said he sees a lot of gifted kids who do not have these issues, and he told me about the other stuff. There is a spectrum of it as well, not all kids with TS have co-morbid conditions or learning disorders. A child can have TS alone, or TS with ADHD, or TS with OCD or TS with all of the above. They aren't even sure they know what actually causes TS….however it appears to be developmental in nature since many kids outgrow it.

Thanks for sharing your story. My ds has always been a little quirky but nothing seemed too off-kilter until he started with the eye blinks probably around 3 years ago. They got bad as his seasonal allergies started ramping up then kind of went away. They'd come back again when he was getting ill also. Then they'd go away. Then they came back and he started the small grunt/moan that followed the blink. That continued on and off (although mainly on and mostly at home) for around a year before the pediatrician gave the diagnosis. Until that time they were still considering them transient tics.

I'm assuming his giftedness has helped him coast by until now but now that things are getting more writing-intensive he's having more difficulties compensating. We don't have a 504 at this point and I hadn't realized that Tourette's was covered under IDEA but after reading that article I'm definitely going to work to have more things in place for him next year.

I did email the pediatrician and ask to see the more Tourette's-specific pediatrician again figuring that should be a non threatening place to start and we'll see what she says. Who knows how long it will take to get in there. I was told the developmental pediatrician could take a year to get an appointment. Yikes!