Someone’s kid is going to be the first one on the playground to yell a four letter word. That word spreads like wildfire and soon, every parent is asking, “who did you learn that from?!” The answer is going to be: my kid.
I’ve always had a robust, frequent range of profanity, with plans to rein it in as soon as I had kids. When my son was 18 months old though, it wasn’t his potential for swearing that I was most concerned about, it was his sudden repetitive eye blinking. A pediatrician, however, assured me that it was a ‘tic’, very common, especially in boys, and not to worry, he’d “grow out of it.”
The eye blinking did go away, but was replaced by throat growling, which was in turn replaced by curling his arm up like a little wing. Then, there were the tantrums. Yes, toddlers have tantrums. These, were not those. These were hitting, kicking, screaming, biting, scratching, throwing things, spitting, crying, hours long, waking nightmares. They began out of nowhere. An argument over an apple at Whole Foods could last for four hours.
Once, a neighbor called the police, ‘concerned about my child’s well being.’ When the cops arrived, my son’s tantrum had ended, and he was happily helping me insert quarters into the washing machine for laundry. Still, it stung. Someone out there, my own neighbor, called the cops on my parenting. I Googled ‘tantrums’, needing to see another kid and another set of parents, as baffled and desperate as we were at this behaviour. My husband took him to the pediatrician and received a condescending pat on the back, ‘Daaaad, he’s a toddler! Ha ha, hang in there!’ One day I called my mom after a doozy. The house in total disarray, a three hour long tantrum recently withered after my husband held my son, wrapping his bigger arms around my sons littler arms and torso until he stopped fighting, both of them still sweating and panting. “What do I do?” I asked my mom in desperation. She replied, “have you tried a sticker chart yet?”
Several doctors, thousands of hours of research later, a pediatric neurologist diagnosed my son with Tourette’s Syndrome at the age of five. Turns out those tics didn’t go away, those tantrums weren’t just about being a toddler, they were about enduring what is called Tourette’s rages, kind of a neurological forest fire going off in the brain. Turns out a sticker chart wouldn’t have done sh*t.
Tourette’s is weird disorder, full of unknowns and co-occurring conditions, and most people’s universal idea of Tourette’s is that of a crazed guy shouting socially inappropriate swear words in public. There’s even a meme called ‘Tourette’s Guy’ with a bunch of videos online where he shouts stuff like F*ck salt!’ and ‘don’t talk Sh*t about Total!’
The swearing vulgarity aspect of Tourette’s is actually a pretty uncommon symptom, approximately 10% of Tourette’s patients suffer from it. Called Coprolalia, it’s characterized as an involuntary swearing or the involuntary utterance of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks. It comes from blending a Greek work ‘feces’ with a Latin work ‘to talk.’ The onset of this symptom is usually puberty, and given my son has not yet reached puberty, it’s still a scary unknown.
One Saturday morning, my two kids and I visited the local farmer’s market. They have a booth where customers can leave their dog with volunteers while they shop. On our way out of the farmer’s market, we stopped to pet all of the doggies, when a woman volunteer with a thick gray braid down her back, wearing a long skirt with Teva sandals, loudly addresses me. ‘What’s wrong with your son’s eyes?’
I hear her, and I’m pretty sure that the dozen or so other people milling around hear her as well, but in that moment, I just want to make the moment before disappear and so I ignore her. I also think that just maybe my son, who is ruffling the neck of a dog, might not have heard her, so I turn away and fake trill to my kids,‘oh my gosh, look at the doggie drink! He’s thirsty!’ and quickly round them up to leave. Thick gray braid lady, however, is having none of it and she asks again, louder this time, ‘what’s wrong with your son’s eyes?!’
At the time, my son had a pronounced eye rolling tic, and it’s one of his worst. As his eyes slowly roll from side to side, his whole face simultaneously freezes. It’s often frozen in an unfortunate rictus grimace. And something interesting about tics; when mentioned, it acts as a trigger and the tics intensify. So he’s ticcing away and I just say ‘he has Tourettes’ and grab my kids by the hands, dragging them quickly away.
As we exit, my brain and adrenaline swiftly kick on and, shaking with latent anger, I begin sourcing options as to how to confront this woman without my children present. I want to figuratively cut a b*tch. Consumed with irrational plotting, I’m surprised when my son interrupts; he’s upset. He’s upset with me for telling this stranger about his Tourettes. ‘Why did you have to tell her?’ he asks. At first, I take this to mean that he is embarrassed or ashamed, and it is that, but it’s also that it is no longer my information to tell. He will not ever be ‘Tourette’s Boy’. He’s a super smart, cool kid that sometimes rolls his eyes or wiggles his eyebrows or grunts and that’s his own business. My path is now to support and advocate however he chooses.
When I think of his future and the challenges puberty and beyond may bring, I am fearful, but even if he is among the 10% of coprolalia sufferers, I’ll be right there with him shouting expletives in public if that’s what support means. If nothing else, I’ve given him a pretty rock solid skill set in swearing.