GBE2 Challenge: Clarity

Boy, have I missed the ball. I was sitting watching our older son this past weekend, and this fact hit me like a ton of bricks. He was in the middle of a tic which he developed the second day of school this year.

Squat. Bum out. Right arm back. Right index finger in bum.

Ahhhh, tics can be sooooo lovely!

"Honey," I have said with an embarrassed tone, "get your finger OUT OF YOUR BUM!" (and, yes, we really DO say "bum" in this house. It must be a relic from my exchange student days in Australia).

I'll admit, I'm a victim of my upbringing. Certain things just are NOT POLITE! And, darn it, if it kills me, I do not want this family to go to hell in a handbasket. Fine. I'll live in a cave. I just don't want to let ourselves go completely.

Yet, when I try to correct our son's behavior, he is oblivious to my words, the stares and laughs of others. He just keeps doing it. And, actually, I don't mind this one as much as I minded the one he had this summer: Touch tip of penis. Touch eyeball with same hand REALLY FAST. Penis. Eyeball. Penis. Eyeball.

The more intense the situation, the more fervent the tic. It reached a point this summer where the penis tic turned into a compulsion. This meant that, when he felt anxious, not only would his body involuntarily strike these postures, but he would also consiously do them. Except, with the compulsion, he was driven by need. He HAD to get to that penis to quickly tap before he tapped his eyeball. Often, this meant dropping his drawers. It didn't matter where we were. The only goal was to get to the penis. My, my. This past summer, he was one big ball one OCD and tics.

When his tics first came out when he was little, I would cringe. It seemed to be just one more way that he didn't look like the rest of us. Back then, my mission was to cure him and make him like the rest of us. How the heck was I going to do that when he was blinking his eyes all the time? Or, how about the week when he kept looking over his left shoulder every 20 seconds?

Blend. I just wanted to blend. It didn't matter what war I was fighting behind the doors to our home. Was it too much to ask that we at least blend when we walked outside?

As he grew and the level of his anxiety increased, so, too, did his posturing. They became big, coming out in jerky movements that often stopped us all dead in our tracks. By this point, life had exploded in front of me like a bomb, and I would just meet those tics with a blank stare in the opposite direction, waiting patiently while his system worked itself out.

But then, this past weekend, the two of us were walking in my childhood neighborhood, sharing a stroll like we had never before done. He was happy, almost giddy, laughing as we made our way up the street. We rounded the corner at the top of the hill and came across two large dogs. Just like that, our carefree walk had vanished.

Why is he scared of dogs all of a sudden?

"Just keep walking and don't look at them," I instructed him. "They are friendly. They won't hurt you." But he kept looking back nervously. And, they kept following. They wanted to play. It scared him. He became so nervous that pretty soon...

...Squat. Bum out. Right arm back. Right index finger in bum. Stand. Then repeat.

Well, this wasn't going to encourage the dogs to leave. They stayed. And, they wanted to come closer! Our pleasant walk had turned us both into a bundle of nerves.

Squat. Bum out. Right arm back. Right index finger in bum.

It was heartbreaking to watch.

This time I looked at him with clarity. There was no embarrassment. I felt no need to shape the behavior. Every time he did it, I felt his pain. He was scared. He was so scared that it was coming out in physical behaviors.

He is not a compilation of physical behaviors, strange actions to watch like a curiosity. I'm not going to sweep them under the rug and pretend that they didn't happen.

I saw his tic as a cry for help, a physical barometer of his emotional well-being.
Don't be proud of me. This child is ten. That moment of clarity takes on more of a "duh!" moment in light of his age.

I think of that moment and just shake my head. How much of an ill-approach to the treatment of our kids is caused by a lack of understanding? As intuitive as I know that I am, I also know that I lack clarity on so many issues.

Perhaps it is an evolutionary process. If that's the case, all I can say is may I never remain stagnant.