Our First Recollection of Tics

Long before we knew Connor had TS, he had it. It is only in hindsight that we can look at the picture more clearly. Connor was diagnosed with TS in 3rd grade, but we vividly remember an incident back in 1st grade that was TS related. Connor's 1st grade teacher, a 1st year teacher who was struggling with a number of issues inherent to starting in the teaching profession, started giving Connor grief for whistling in class. He wasn't whistling a song or anything, he was whistling second-long little chirps which was clearly (especially in hindsight) a vocal tic.

His teacher was regularly giving him a hard time and he was starting to get pretty upset about the attention. One day some of the other boys were whistling in class -- just whistling, not making fun of Connor -- and the teacher said the next person who whistles would have to come to the front of the class and record themselves whistling so that their parents could hear how disruptive they were to the class.

So then Connor fired one of his involuntary vocal tics and made a whistle/chirp sound. The teacher got upset and forced Connor to come to the front of the class. He was totally embarrassed and definitely in shock as she, in fact, followed through with her threat and started the tape recorder. He made no sound even as the teacher egged him on to whistle.

We were enraged with the teacher when Connor brought a cassette tape home and, not one of our finer moments as parents, were disappointed that we didn't call her out for this behavior. We were simply blown away at the whole experience and busy trying to make sure it didn't have any lasting effects on Connor. Still to this day, I'm disappointed with myself for not immediately contacting the principal about this ridiculous behavior.

While we have earlier memories of tics, this incident was our first real "situation" that we can ever remember and it started us down the path of talking with his pediatrician about this and other tics. At this point, his mother and I knew enough to know that this kind of behavior was associated with TS, but after some initial investigation were assuming (ok, hoping) the various vocal and motor tics would resolve themselves as they do for countless young kids.