Parenting Tourette's
Is there a manual for this? I'm doing my best but, I've spent every day for the last couple of weeks ugly crying and doubting everything I do. Its the end of the school year and my wonderful kid is struggling so much. This year has been a mixed bag of support vs teachers who make every day hard for her. I truly know she's disruptive and most of the time when she gets a referral for it she's doing things that are more impulsive than actual tics, which we all know is still part of the package, but the school and specific teachers have a harder time with. She's had to sit out a lot of fun stuff, she's had a lot of ISS and detention.
I fight for her (she has an IEP) but sometimes even I'm confused on when to discipline and when to let it go. I'm doing my very best, but most situations I feel lost on how to handle. With my non-TS kid it was more clear cut - bad behavior = punishment, usually resulted in appropriate deterring of future bad behavior. With her its the wild wild west and I don't know what the rules are, or when I'm fighting too hard for her or when I'm not fighting hard enough, and I'm so tired. I'm an involved parent - I talk to her openly, I show up to volunteer for everything, I check in with her teachers - I know she's a good kid at the core, and that makes it easier for me to understand that these are more impulse-control issues rather than disciplinary problems, but the school always makes me feel like I'm coddling her too much or that these behaviors should be disciplined and then I doubt myself. When they call and say oh she made noises or loud comments it's an easy fight from me, but when it's behavioral stuff like throwing things or saying inappropriate things that are not part of her tics, it's harder for me to know how to react or how hard to bat for her about it. I mean I know she still has to practice impulse control, but I don't know how to encourage that outside of discipline, which seems only to make her depressed and angry and make her issues worse.
I guess I'm looking for both perspectives: parents who've been through it, and people with Tourette's who have been there. What helped? What didn't help? What do you wish your parents understood more? What do you wish your school did differently? Help a mom who loves her kid more than life do better by her.