Please Check Out This Video

Camp Twitch and Shout - The Movie from Emmett Williams on Vimeo.

Monster Man has been telling me for quite some time now that there is a video available called 'Camp Twitch and Shout: The Movie'. He couldn't find it on YouTube, and he wasn't sure where to find it, but he knew that it existed. He has been wanting to see it ever since he first found out about it. This morning, I found the link to the video posted in a recent post on the Camp Twitch and Shout Facebook Page. The video, which is about 30 minutes long, is so much more than I expected it to be! I knew that it would explain about camp, and about how camp benefits the campers. What I didn't expect was that it would be an incredible source of information for educating others about Tourette Syndrome. Please watch the video and share it. Let's help spread awareness!

The importance of sturdy shoes

I am pretty sure that I've mentioned in the past that Monster Man went through three pairs of flip flops last summer due to one of his tics, where he'd drag the toes under his foot and end up breaking the flip flops. He also manages to put a lot of holes in his socks, something that I hadn't realized until recently was also attributed to his tics.

Monster Man has a number of tics involving his feet. I discovered today, thanks to the National Tourette Syndrome Association's Facebook page, that tics involving feet are very common. So many people commented on how their own tics or the tics of their children have resulted in the need for one of two things. 1) Cheap shoes (why pay a lot of money for shoes that will need to be quickly replaced?) OR 2) Sturdy shoes.

We've gone both routes for Monster Man. The last time I bought him a really cheap pair of sneakers, he managed to put holes in the leather near the toes in just a matter of weeks. His next pair of sneakers was the skateboarding shoes that are so popular right now. They have extra thick soles, strong sueded leather, and thick stitching, and they are made to take some abuse. I bought that pair for Monster Man right before he returned to school last August. They are still holding up strong, though they have gotten pretty dirty and nasty over time. For the sole purpose of allowing him to have a nicer pair to wear for church or other places he should wear nicer shoes, I recently bought him a second pair of skateboarding shoes.

When it comes to feet tics for those with Tourette Syndrome, having a sturdy pair of shoes is of great importance.

The Advantages of Tourettes?!

I know that I mentioned previously that I felt that no one was to blame for Monster Man having Tourette Syndrome, and that I actually felt like he was chosen by God to have it. Instead of feeling that it is a burden, I feel that it is part of what makes Monster Man who he is, that makes him have such a detailed imagination that he can put himself into other characters (like Santa Claus) and not only think about that character as a whole, but go into detail about what being that character entails. The same imagination that let him become Santa is the same attention to detail that allows him to draw out his future race car. His imagination comes alive not only in play but also in his drawings and in his writing. Perhaps the amount of detail he puts into everything stems directly from his TS.

Why do I say that? If you read Jonah Lehrer's article on The Advantages of Tourette Syndrome, you will read that studies are showing that those with TS are more precise in detail, making fewer errors on challenges in eye-movement experiments and more accurately timing the length of time in which objects appear on a screen, than their peers without TS. Perhaps there is an advantage to TS, after all. It doesn't hinder those with TS, making it impossible to reach their goals. Instead, it makes them better at what they do. It adds to their talents. It, as I've said before, makes them who they are.

I've spent a lot of time on the National Tourette Syndrome Association Facebook Page recently, and I have found that many of the members there feel the same way. While the challenges that go along with TS really stink, they can still see the gift that they were given.