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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 196485" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Welcome, Tamarah. From your spelling, I presume you're in the US.</p><p></p><p>The others are correct, with all the intervention he is already getting, I really don't know what more you could have in place. It's not easy, especially with Tourette's. Is there a local support network he could maybe contact? Perhaps if he could talk to other Tourette's teens he might realise he's not the only kid to have these problems or these feelings.</p><p></p><p>As for separate diagnoses for everything - sometimes it's just all part of the one global complex. For example, difficult child 3 has a diagnosis of autism plus ADHD. However, he would also qualify as ODD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Sensory Integration Disorder (SID), extreme anxiety, school phobia/school avoidance, hypermobility (although that has at least partly been officially diagnosed) and hyperlexia.</p><p>Apart from maybe the hypermobility, it's all part of the whole package that is difficult child 3. All one disability, all connected. And even the hypermobility could be connected - we keep meeting kids with similar constellations of symptoms.</p><p></p><p>Frankly, from a parental point of view with our kids - we treat what we see and have to deal with. We can't wait for official labels, we just roll up our sleeves, get stuck in and deal with it.</p><p></p><p>For example, with difficult child 3, when he was very little and not talking - I developed my own way of communicating with him and teaching him new words. At one point I even had a speech therapist tell me not to let him read - as I said to her, "How do I stop him?" </p><p>And as it turned out, what I did happened to be just right, it met his needs and was a key to him communicating. Normally they recommend breaking complex tasks into their simpler component parts - but with difficult child 3 at that time, he needed to be given the whole complex interconnection of communication - the sound of a word, the look of a word, the context of a word (from the film of it being used, or us acting out the meaning of the word).</p><p></p><p>It is very important to have faith in yourself as a parent, to trust your instincts. So if you feel your son is struggling with anxiety - then do what you feel he needs, in terms of reassurance or other strategies. Teach him meditation, deep breathing, any visualisation technique that he can use to help calm himself.</p><p></p><p>difficult child 3 was taught to deep-breathe by his psychologist. Because he is obsessed with numbers, she told him to breathe in for six seconds then breathe out for six seconds. He had to put his hands on his diaphragm and feel it moving in and out; watch himself in the mirror to make sure his shoulders weren't rising and falling also. SHe walked him through tensing and relaxing his muscles, and how different a relaxed muscle feels form a tense one.</p><p></p><p>There are many relaxation exercises, lots of visualisations you can use to help your child. If he trusts you, then you might be the best person to involve him in this.</p><p></p><p>I've used relaxation/visualisation to help me deal with physical pain. If you ever did natural childbirth classes, you probably already have the basics. One thing I found helpful, which is also useful in anxiety - visualisation which is personally chosen by you (or in this case, your son).</p><p>In my case, I visualise myself in a rainforest near the sea. It works well for me because it is a real place. I have been there, I made a point of trying to remember as much about the place as I could. Recently I had a chance to re-visit the place and this time I took photos to help reinforce my memory of the place. In a good visualisation, you need to focus on not just the sight of the place but how it sounds, how it feels to the touch and how it smells. So a visualisation of a beach, for example - you close your eyes and imagine yourself lying on your towel face down. The sun is warm on your back, you can feel the beginning of the tingle that says you are tanning. Underneath, the warmth of the sand seeps through into your skin right to the bones. In the distance you can hear a seagull squawk. The waves sloosh rhythmically up and down the beach, in slow, calm tempo. You can smell the salt and the faint fishy smell of wet seaweed. And all the time, you breathe slowly, in time to the wash of the waves, in and out. You feel the air move into your nose and down into your lungs, you feel the oxygen spread through your body and you feel the breath come back out, taking the carbon dioxide out of your body. Again as you breathe in, you feel the air reach deep inside, as deep as you can get it with each slow breath.</p><p></p><p>Over time, with repeat practice, this can be very powerful as a tool to help calm oneself. To begin learning this, it is good to practice this when you DON'T need it, at a time when you are already relaxed.</p><p></p><p>For example, when I was using this for pain relief I had my own very strong visualisation specifically modified to help me focus my thoughts on easing pain. But to strengthen it further, I would practice the visualisation immediately after taking strong painkillers. That way, just as the visualisation became most vivid and the relaxation was most effective, the pills would also be kicking in and the pain actually would be easing chemically. This produced a conditioned response that connected, in my mind, the pain relief from the drugs, with the visualisation. The result was a much more effective visualisation which still works really well, even if I haven't taken the painkillers.</p><p></p><p>The thing with this - you customise it to your own needs. Or for your son, you talk to him, ask him to think of a place where he felt happy and relaxed. It can be a real place or it can be a fantasy place which is similar to a real place. For example, in my rainforest there is a large capsule thing, like a giant Faberge egg that I can actually open and go inside. Once inside, it is different again (like Dr Who's Tardis) and is like a room. In each mental frame, I could find something that matches the image. Together, it's completely unreal. But the individual pieces of the sequence can be made more effective by putting together my photos of the rainforest by the sea, holding a small cloisonne egg and remembering the formal living room in my aunt's house (even to the smell of the home-made furniture polish - a mix of turpentine, honey from the beeswax and lavender). </p><p></p><p>Heather, I know this is suddenly off-topic, but something about your daughter 'clicks' with mine. Have you introduced her to 'knitting' chain mail? Anything crafty can be very relaxing (my girl loves fiddly, meticulous detail as well as anything different) and once you've got it organised with your bag of bits beside you and your pliers and wirecutters handy, chain mail knitting or weaving can be relaxing. I would see husband and his daughter sitting side by side, each working on their own piece of single mail.</p><p></p><p>There can be many ways to relax - easy child 2/difficult child 2 has found craft work, puzzles, tapestry, sewing - it all helps her reduce her (at times extreme) anxiety. Her cutting was partly anxiety, and a lot of it due to emotions just overwhelming her. She is still very emotional, very anxious at times, but no longer cuts. Thank goodness!</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 196485, member: 1991"] Welcome, Tamarah. From your spelling, I presume you're in the US. The others are correct, with all the intervention he is already getting, I really don't know what more you could have in place. It's not easy, especially with Tourette's. Is there a local support network he could maybe contact? Perhaps if he could talk to other Tourette's teens he might realise he's not the only kid to have these problems or these feelings. As for separate diagnoses for everything - sometimes it's just all part of the one global complex. For example, difficult child 3 has a diagnosis of autism plus ADHD. However, he would also qualify as ODD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Sensory Integration Disorder (SID), extreme anxiety, school phobia/school avoidance, hypermobility (although that has at least partly been officially diagnosed) and hyperlexia. Apart from maybe the hypermobility, it's all part of the whole package that is difficult child 3. All one disability, all connected. And even the hypermobility could be connected - we keep meeting kids with similar constellations of symptoms. Frankly, from a parental point of view with our kids - we treat what we see and have to deal with. We can't wait for official labels, we just roll up our sleeves, get stuck in and deal with it. For example, with difficult child 3, when he was very little and not talking - I developed my own way of communicating with him and teaching him new words. At one point I even had a speech therapist tell me not to let him read - as I said to her, "How do I stop him?" And as it turned out, what I did happened to be just right, it met his needs and was a key to him communicating. Normally they recommend breaking complex tasks into their simpler component parts - but with difficult child 3 at that time, he needed to be given the whole complex interconnection of communication - the sound of a word, the look of a word, the context of a word (from the film of it being used, or us acting out the meaning of the word). It is very important to have faith in yourself as a parent, to trust your instincts. So if you feel your son is struggling with anxiety - then do what you feel he needs, in terms of reassurance or other strategies. Teach him meditation, deep breathing, any visualisation technique that he can use to help calm himself. difficult child 3 was taught to deep-breathe by his psychologist. Because he is obsessed with numbers, she told him to breathe in for six seconds then breathe out for six seconds. He had to put his hands on his diaphragm and feel it moving in and out; watch himself in the mirror to make sure his shoulders weren't rising and falling also. SHe walked him through tensing and relaxing his muscles, and how different a relaxed muscle feels form a tense one. There are many relaxation exercises, lots of visualisations you can use to help your child. If he trusts you, then you might be the best person to involve him in this. I've used relaxation/visualisation to help me deal with physical pain. If you ever did natural childbirth classes, you probably already have the basics. One thing I found helpful, which is also useful in anxiety - visualisation which is personally chosen by you (or in this case, your son). In my case, I visualise myself in a rainforest near the sea. It works well for me because it is a real place. I have been there, I made a point of trying to remember as much about the place as I could. Recently I had a chance to re-visit the place and this time I took photos to help reinforce my memory of the place. In a good visualisation, you need to focus on not just the sight of the place but how it sounds, how it feels to the touch and how it smells. So a visualisation of a beach, for example - you close your eyes and imagine yourself lying on your towel face down. The sun is warm on your back, you can feel the beginning of the tingle that says you are tanning. Underneath, the warmth of the sand seeps through into your skin right to the bones. In the distance you can hear a seagull squawk. The waves sloosh rhythmically up and down the beach, in slow, calm tempo. You can smell the salt and the faint fishy smell of wet seaweed. And all the time, you breathe slowly, in time to the wash of the waves, in and out. You feel the air move into your nose and down into your lungs, you feel the oxygen spread through your body and you feel the breath come back out, taking the carbon dioxide out of your body. Again as you breathe in, you feel the air reach deep inside, as deep as you can get it with each slow breath. Over time, with repeat practice, this can be very powerful as a tool to help calm oneself. To begin learning this, it is good to practice this when you DON'T need it, at a time when you are already relaxed. For example, when I was using this for pain relief I had my own very strong visualisation specifically modified to help me focus my thoughts on easing pain. But to strengthen it further, I would practice the visualisation immediately after taking strong painkillers. That way, just as the visualisation became most vivid and the relaxation was most effective, the pills would also be kicking in and the pain actually would be easing chemically. This produced a conditioned response that connected, in my mind, the pain relief from the drugs, with the visualisation. The result was a much more effective visualisation which still works really well, even if I haven't taken the painkillers. The thing with this - you customise it to your own needs. Or for your son, you talk to him, ask him to think of a place where he felt happy and relaxed. It can be a real place or it can be a fantasy place which is similar to a real place. For example, in my rainforest there is a large capsule thing, like a giant Faberge egg that I can actually open and go inside. Once inside, it is different again (like Dr Who's Tardis) and is like a room. In each mental frame, I could find something that matches the image. Together, it's completely unreal. But the individual pieces of the sequence can be made more effective by putting together my photos of the rainforest by the sea, holding a small cloisonne egg and remembering the formal living room in my aunt's house (even to the smell of the home-made furniture polish - a mix of turpentine, honey from the beeswax and lavender). Heather, I know this is suddenly off-topic, but something about your daughter 'clicks' with mine. Have you introduced her to 'knitting' chain mail? Anything crafty can be very relaxing (my girl loves fiddly, meticulous detail as well as anything different) and once you've got it organised with your bag of bits beside you and your pliers and wirecutters handy, chain mail knitting or weaving can be relaxing. I would see husband and his daughter sitting side by side, each working on their own piece of single mail. There can be many ways to relax - easy child 2/difficult child 2 has found craft work, puzzles, tapestry, sewing - it all helps her reduce her (at times extreme) anxiety. Her cutting was partly anxiety, and a lot of it due to emotions just overwhelming her. She is still very emotional, very anxious at times, but no longer cuts. Thank goodness! Marg [/QUOTE]
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