Look At It This Way Mom…

So…something happened today that was super inspiring to me and so I thought I would share it with you because I thought maybe it would inspire you as well.

As some of you know I have a child who has Tourette Syndrome (and for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it’s a neurological disorder, where the body makes some uncontrollable movements or sounds, such as blinking, hand shaking, throat-clearing, etc) By the way…it’s NOT what you see on television and movies. “Comedians” can be real assholes and they really piss me off when they make people believe this is something that it’s not (but that’s beside the point).

Back to the inspiring stuff.

So last night my kiddo was super bummed and teary-eyed and was feeling really down. We talked and I found out that lately, there’s been a lot of people staring at him, especially at school. I also found out that he’s been trying to suppress his tics and that his muscles were hurting. Imagine not being able to stop shaking your hands in the 4^th grade and everyone is staring at you. So he basically tries to tighten his muscles all day and hold in the tics and he gets sore. Right? Breaks my heart. We hugged and talked and he went to school this morning.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not my son was sitting in a classroom in physical and emotional pain. So…I stopped by the school, signed him out and we went to the park for lunch.

I won’t say everything we talked about because, Pokemon and stuff like that. But I told him I want to find a way to help him. I don’t want him to feel this way. And the next thing I knew I was sitting there and basically being schooled by my child. Here’s what he told me:

Mom, I was just having a hard time yesterday. Yes, my tics are frustrating and they hurt me sometimes and I get pretty sore. And it really does hurt when people stare. I feel so embarrassed. But think about it Mom, some kids don’t have food to eat. They don’t have homes. They can’t go to school. Some kids have cancer. Some kids live in countries that are getting bombed. Look at it this way Mom…I’m pretty lucky. I’ll be fine. If there was a cure for Tourette’s, I wouldn’t accept it because I think God made the right choice when he gave me this. I think He knew I could handle it.

Well…(of course I’m sobbing at this point). We hug it out and he looks at the clock on his Fit Bit and says, “Mom…I have to get back to school by 1:25. We have a Social Studies project we are working on.”

I mean really?

I’m not writing this to say, “Oh MY kid is so great and I feel the need to gloat about it” because he can act like a total lunatic just like every other kid. But the lesson he taught me was that when life gets you down you have to put things in perspective. I know we all have certain issues in our lives, but perspective is going to be a new normal for me. Of course I’ll still bitch and moan about all the laundry but in my heart I’ll know I’m lucky that I have laundry to do, and I’m lucky I have the people around me that I do it for.

(And yes I make them help with laundry…but only a little bit because you should see the way my husband and kids fold towels!)

I hope that if a 10 year-old boy with an incurable neurological disorder can not only cope with it, but look at it from the perspective of how lucky he is to have it…then the rest of us can find perspective in our own lives.

That’s all. And thanks for reading this. xoxo