AS son developed a Tic

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My 5 year old son developed a tic the last two weeks. It's getting progressivly worse. More when he's attmpting to concentrate harder. We have to remind him to stop. Well today he got sent home from school because of this tic. He rolls his eyes to the back of his head for 2 -3 seconds. We don't know what to do. He's never had tics this strong. Kids pick up bad habits, but this one makes his own life disruptive. Any suggestions would help. BTW, his doctor is useless. We are in the process of switching pediatricians.

Why is it disruptive? If it's only 2-3 seconds, it's not taking a lot of time out of his day unless he's doing it more than about 10 times per hour. The only problem I can imagine would be overextension of the muscles that control the eyeballs.

It will probably go away or become infrequent in about a year.

And why on earth was he sent home for having a tic?

Why are you telling him to stop? He CAN'T. I used to have this tick. It made my eyes hurt after awhile. It went away eventually, but it was uncomfortable socially and physically. I would have been pissed if I was sent home from school or if someone told me to stop it, or reminded me I was doing it. I am reminded of my tic each time it occurs!! ! Please explain to your son and his teachers the nature of tics and how they can't be helped, are not intentional, and should not be considered wrong , bad, or rude.

Wow, sent home for having a tic is horrible! I have tics like those, i do the exact same thing, roll my eyes i dont know why, like out of nowhere, but i also have tourettes. Now growing up i didnt have tics, nothing that were ever noticable anyways, but like when i was 7 or so, i started not being able to control any of my motor functions, like i used to be the master at jenga, easily calm, but then i started twitchin where i couldn't do the simplest things, it was weird. Anyways, did you ever check into tourettes? My tourettes are more on the mild side, thankfully.

wow this IS sad, being sent home for a tic is out of order. There is great danger in a child with ASD having to conceal their difference, when he should in fact be free to be his difference.

I would be very very questioning with regard the ethos of such a school that would support such action.

My guess is that a teacher thought he was rolling his eyes at him/her. Probably accused him of it, and he denied it. The parents should have intervened here. The school shouldn't suspend a kid for rolling their eyes, still, even if it was intentional.

That was my first thought. Poor kiddo! My son starting having a type of tic where he clears his throat quite often, all year round. It started when he was about two and he's almost five. Over the last several months he's also been doing what I call "long blinks". He will blink both eyes for about a second or so (noticably longer than a regular blink). His eyes are fine, so .

I agree, your son shouldn't have been sent home for that! How absurd!

I imagine he was sent home out of fear that something serious was going to happen. Rolling eyes back into your head can be a sign of a seizure.

i once had a couple seizures in high school, and after that the school was super-panicky that i was going to have another one. The teacher would see my face was red and require me to go to the nurse, the nurse would glance at me and send me home. And often times my face was only red because I was upset that I had say, got a low test grade, or just ran from the other side of the building to get to class on time. I also had a nercous habit of tapping my foot - the nurse saw that and called my grandma to immediately pick me up as I "was getting the shakes"

Thank you for all your responses. My son has an aid at school with him. So they know it was a tic and not him rolling his eyes at the teacher. They sent him home because they were concerned with him having a seizure and did not want to send him on the bus in case he did have one. Us as parents did explain it to the school, but they want a note from his doctor. We agreed to that, but that is no excuse for sending him home. I really think they were more concerned about themselves and want to CYA. (Cover your asses). Excuse my french. I explained it to my son that we'll have to see why he's doing it. But I have noticed that he does it more when he's in deep thoughts. Thanks guys. As NT parents, its good to get other perspectives. Thanks.

Rich

wow, that's terrible. I'm not really sure how I can help. But you see, I have a brother who is obviously AS, and his doctor is also useless, but when I tried to ask for help on this issue in the chatroom once, everyone there didn't believe me, especially this guy named Trengo, who was being a total ***hole the whole time about this situation even when I was taking it seriously . All I can say is, don't go to the chatroom of this site to ask for advice about this, everyone there will just think you're lying, which is sad really because I thought everyone on this site was kind to each other, oh well

Hi Rich,
I have a son with ASD and another son with TS only. My son who is on the spectrum has that eye tic. His started when he was quite young (he is 11 now) and just to make sure I did have him have an EEG just to be on the safe side, but it was clear. Now his tics consist of his eye tic and a left shoulder shrug.

My TS only guy has tons of tics including coprolia and copropraxia (sp?) so I MADE sure everyone in the school knew so he wouldn't be going home or getting in trouble if these things happened.

I know of a mother who's son has Tourette Syndrome and the poor guy had a smiling tic. He once got in real big trouble as the yard duty told him to stop something and he got nervous and started smiling. Everytime she told him to stop smiling (thinking he was being a Smart Ass), he would smile, so the poor guy got sent to the office.

Anyway, I think your right, the school is checking their Ass to make sure they don't get into trouble, but I do agree, it is to the extreme to be sending him home just because of one sympton, which is actually a tic!

Lainie

My son stims when working on school work that he doesn't like doing. I didn't notice stims until he started going to school. A stim is different from a tic though. If your son has a true tic, then he can't stop doing it no matter how hard he tries.

I still do the eye roll way high up till it feels your looking at the top of your skull.
I usually do it when I am thinking hard on something that seems to be just out of recollection. So in school I did this quite a bit when working on papers or tests. The slight straining feeling in the eye muscles gave me something to focus on without being distracting and it cut out visual and and give natural white noise (you get the roar of the blood in your ear sound) while doing it.

I used to also tilt my head back and let my mouth hang open when really thinking hard. Sometime I would press on my forehead or temples with my hands. Must have looked pretty strange. LOL.

See if closing his eyes will work instead maybe with a bit of clench for extra focus. Sometimes just cutting out the visuals for a bit can help.