Tourette Syndrome and ADHD

It kind of made sense.  

Here we were seeing this "Behavior Health Specialist" to help us with our son who had recently been diagnosed with Tourette's, but she was asking us about hyperactivity and possible ADHD.

I mean, Thumper had always been super hyperactive, although I don't think I'd ever go to label him as ADD or ADHD.  Funny to say though, as we sat in this doctor's office for an hour, Thumper could not sit still for the life of him.  He was up and down, climbing on chairs, opening blinds, fiddling with whatever he could get his hands on.  No wonder she was thinking ADHD.

Well, she had given us some questionaires to fill out and one to give to his teacher.  These were full of questions in which you were to rate Thumper and his actions by circling "never", "rarely", "sometimes", "often", or "always".  At home, my husband and I were just laughing as almost every question registered as an "often".  We were thinking, "Gee, maybe this kid does have ADHD."  

From what we have slowly been learning, it seems as if Tourette Syndrome often comes with some other little friends, such as ADD, ADHD, or OCD.  So, sometimes doctors like to rule out ADHD before dealing with Tourette's itself.  

Anyway, we finished our questions and went back to our next appointment to see what the doctor would say.  Actually, among all this Tourette new stuff, we were actually thinking how nice it would be to be able to help Thumper calm down a little bit more.  Seriously, he was soooo hyper.  He had so much potential, but he just couldn't seem to focus.  We had to continuously tell him to do his jobs or practice his piano or do his homework.  He was always getting distracted and messing around.  He always had to be running or spinning or standing on his head upside down on the couch.  It drove us crazy at times.  

Well, we were surprised when we went back to the doctor and she compared our answers with those of Thumper's teacher.  While our marks were many for the "often" or "sometimes" category, his teacher had marked every single question as "never" minus one that she had said "rarely".

It just didn't make sense.  There were even a few questions on there that she had marked "never" in which she herself had brought to our attention earlier in the year.  We just didn't understand.  It was almost as if she wanted to make sure that there was no way we could say he had any form of ADHD.  Or maybe it was as if somebody somewhere was making sure the school was in no way diagnosing Thumper as ADHD.  

It kind of made us mad.  Why would she do that?  Obviously it was so opposite that the specialist couldn't do anything.  

So, oh well for that.  Although it seemed to make sense to us that maybe these tics were a result of having so much energy and hyperactivity that they just had to come out, we would never really know for sure.  At least not now.  Maybe we were hoping to kill 2 birds with 1 stone if that makes any sense.  Maybe we were still stuck on the confusion of where this Tourette's came from anyway.  

So, with ADHD not able to be diagnosed, the specialist went right into focusing on Thumper's tics.