[senco-forum] compulsive behaviours

These might be 'tics' rather than compulsions...

> These might be 'tics' rather than compulsions...

One thing I forgot to mention is that significant ticing or OCB
(obsessive compulsive behaviour) that lasts for more than six months
is classed a disability, which means under the DDA you MUST
accommodate this behaviour as best you can and make sure other
teachers do as well. In any case there is little you can do to reduce
or eliminate ticing, not unless this becomes particularly severe in
which case this will probably involve taking powerful psychoactive
medications that are all too often prone to side effects that can be
just as severe as the tics they are intended to eliminate.

Can tics and compulsions be suppressed? No. Certainly not in the
longer term. Nor should anyone insist upon this especially in a
school, as the conscious effort and mental energy required to suppress
tic based or compulsive behaviour that has a neurological origin will
be very much at the expense of learning. When suppression is demanded
by teachers and others or such behaviours is simply discouraged, a
student may appear to an outside observer to become tic free most of
the time. However most likely they'll be hiding or masking many their
tics or compulsions and certainly they'll end up totally exhausted by
the end of the school day, incapable of doing any useful homework of a
quality that's commensurate with their true potential. The biggest
loss will of course be to their self-esteem, especially over the
longer term.

Unfortunately it's all too easy for teachers to misinterpret tics and
compulsions and not see them for what they are -- simple and often
temporary glitches in a child's fast maturing neurology, sometimes
with devastating consequences. For example in year three my daughter
developed a 'sniffing' tic, where upon her teacher came down on her
hard;

  "How many times do I have to tell you; STOP sniffing and BLOW YOUR
  NOISE child!".

Of course blowing her nose gave my daughter no relief at all from her
compulsion to 'sniff' as this tic was in no way related to the amount
of mucus in her nose. Anyway after repeated chastisements she began
diverting all her energy away from learning and into 'not sniffing',
so as to avoid the severe disapproval and on occasion extreme wrath of
her otherwise mild-mannered teacher.

Soon our school-loving daughter became increasingly depressed and
highly irritable for no reason we could fathom. Ultimately she became
school-phobic ...so different from previously that year when she
couldn't wait for the holidays to end and get back to school. We as
her parents just couldn't work out what the trouble was, so in
desperation we brought forward our plans to relocate to a different
area and of course this meant finding a new school for our daughter.

Well, as soon as we moved and as if by magic we instantly got our
happy school-loving child back, although we were still at a loss to
know what had caused her loss. Then one evening we were casually
chatting and I asked her what she liked most about her new school. She
stopped and thought about this for a moment, then with a rather
embarrassed look on her face she replied;

  "I know this seems really silly Daddy, but my new teacher
  doesn't mind at all if I sniff"!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Eureka! ...what's more come to think of it I
remembered her old teacher had a significant eye-blinking tic herself.
Go figure!

Despite the fact I have full-blown Tourette Syndrome, which means
there is a strong possibility she could genetically inherit this
condition from me, her sniffing proved to be no more than a single
transient tic and to date now age 15 she remains tic free.

David Bowles