First Tics

When did his tics really start?  It's hard to say exactly.  

We never noticed anything out of the ordinary until maybe around the time he was about 7 1/2, he began sniffing an awful lot.  

I figured maybe he had allergies or he had a cold a lot.  

But then he began swallowing.  Gulping.  A lot.  Gee, maybe he had a sore throat or he had really bad allergies.  

Hmmm.....

As time came closer to his 8th birthday, I began noticing something new.  He was sniffing and gulping, but he was also doing this little nose scrunchy thing.  Allergies?  A cold?  

One day he was gulping a lot and I asked him why he was doing that.  At first he seemed to not know what I was talking about, but then when I pointed it out to him he said he just had to because his throat felt "yucky".  

We watched as he began scrunching up his nose more often.  It was wintertime now and he was in a school choir and a local Nutcracker ballet as a party boy.  As we watched him on stage singing in the choir and dancing on the stage, he looked awkward.  Don't get me wrong, he was still my cute little boy, but he stood out from the other kids as he scrunched up his face over and over again nonstop.

One day I watched him after school as he scrunched his nose and I counted.  I watched him as we had a conversation together for about 3 minutes, and during these 3 minutes, I counted 21 times that he scrunched up his nose.  

I asked him later why he was scrunching his nose up.  He didn't know what I was talking about.  I took him up to the mirror in the bathroom so he could see for himself, and at first he seemed kind of surprised because he didn't know he was doing it.  

OK, so maybe these were some weird little things, nothing huge, but as Thumper turned 8 years old, I decided to just mention it to the doctor at his check up.  

His doctor checked out his nose and throat and ruled out any sinus issues.  I told him about the tics and of course Thumper is freaked out like something is wrong and so he's sitting completely still and staring at the doctor not moving a muscle.  I thought it a little funny, but then it also irritated me a bit because how could this doctor know anything if Thumper wasn't doing anything?  Not that I wanted something to be wrong, but you just hate to not figure things out.  It's like when you are sick and make an appointment, but by the time they get you in you are feeling better.  You don't want them to think you are a crazy mom.  

This pediatrician was on to Thumper.  He seemed to know he was holding these tics in, but he said he noticed that Thumper was blinking an awful lot.  I had never noticed that.  

The doctor said Thumper had some tics and they may go away or they may continue as he grew older.  He said it was hard to say.  He said as long as it wasn't anything big or that Thumper wasn't having any social problems or they weren't bugging him, that we didn't need to worry.  

So, that was it, and we went home figuring it was no big deal.  Little did we know, things would soon get worse for our little Thumper.