Myles Receiving the Courage Award

We are so very proud of our boy.

There have been a few medical things Myles has been going through that I have not been ready yet to mention here, on the blog.

We are a pretty open book, but it has taken me a few weeks to get my head around things, and adjust my mind to a "new normal", and frankly, to be emotionally ok enough to talk about it.

A few weeks back Myles started having verbal and non-verbal tics.  He went to school totally fine, and walked out of the class at the end of the day uncontrollably twitching. His face kept making a grimacing look, and his eyes were blinking really, really hard, and his nose doing a weird twitch....sometimes all 3 together, sometimes a variety of the 3 things.  About a week later, his body started to twitch, like a really bad case of hard, fast hiccups....but w/o the hiccup. All of these things happen in manner that looks very odd, like when it happens you know it's not a normal movement and it's happening because something is off or wrong. There are also episodes of uncontrollable throat clearing, and sniffing.  The following days were a series of Dr appointments, including an hour, one on one, with a neurologist. 

The good news is that for an 8 year old boy with ADHD, this is very common.  They go together.  The not great news is that there is no cure.  It could last a lifetime, or disappear over night, or last until around age 12 and die out.

Obviously, as a mom....it's hard to watch happen.  We are supposed to ignore it....but it's hard to make him sit and do writing homework while his eyes keep slamming shut.  It's hard to send him to school and know that it's very likely he'll start to get made fun of at some point.  It's hard to sit him down and explain that to his classmates, it may look funny. Explaining that most likely kids will ask him about it, and coming up with a plan for what he can say, or how he can explain it.

But you do it.  That's what I'm realizing through all this....you just do it, move through it, one day at a time you figure out how to deal with things.

Mostly, though, I watch him, and I gain strength everyday from his courage, his bravery, and his endurance.

His teacher told me last week he would be getting this award today. She said for a few reasons, but mainly because he has no fear when it comes to standing up for his beliefs, and that he's very matter of fact when it comes to explaining his "issues". Issues being the things other kids notice and ask him about, whether that's the tics, his chewing on rubber pencil toppers so he doesn't eat his shirts, Velcro under the edge of his desk to keep his hands busy and not pulling out his hair....he just explains it, and moves on.

So, today was a big day.  We are so proud of him.  His courage gives his parents more strength than he knows at this point.