I’ve written before about ‘Tourettes Mums’, the amazing mothers who fight tirelessly for their children who tic. But battling for your child day in, day out is physically and emotionally demanding. Here’s one mum, guest blogger Hayley Davies-Monk, describing her family’s struggle with their local school, and her search for positive aspects of their situation:

When Touretteshero asked me to write a guest post I was in a place where I just could not find any positives in our situation.…

As regular readers will know, verbal communication gets extremely tricky for me during a ‘ticcing fit’. I almost always lose the ability to speak and have to switch to a blinking system in order to communicate.

That being said, I do occasionally say some things during a fit, but they’re never very useful or relevant.…

It was beautiful in London yesterday, warm and spring-like. On the way home the cab took a slightly different route from normal and went through an area where I used to live about eight years ago. We were weaving through streets I knew well, and the time of day and the light were deeply reminiscent of that time too.…

It’s the real Shrove Tuesday and we’ve been enjoying more delicious pancakery here at the castle. Last week I wrote about our evening making practice pancakes, and my ticced recipe suggestions. This evening my tics took a different approach and came up with a range of alternative celebration days.…

Ruth’s back at the castle – hanging out and being my support worker. She’s got a new tic and it’s really making me laugh. It’s very specific to Ruth and she says it in a very specific voice. It’s about her older sister, Joy.…

In the early hours of this morning I woke with a start. I’d been dreaming I was in a house with Fat Sister. It was my house, although it wasn’t the castle. We were in the bathroom and she was helping me get washed and dressed.…

It’s still a week until Shrove Tuesday – but we got things off to an early start at the castle this evening because tomorrow Zoë’s leaving for two months in Nepal, and Poppy was determined she shouldn’t miss out on pancakes.…

Yesterday I wrote about the sort of questions my tics have been asking lately – during dinner with Leftwing Idiot and Poppy this evening they came up with another one:

“Have you thought about why St Petersburg’s paved with horseradish saliva?”…

I’m forever bombarding my friends and family with very strange ticced questions such as:

“Have you pissed on a unicorn in the last four days?”

or

“Can you get a kangaroo holding a jelly through your letterbox?”

But recently my questioning has taken a new turn and I’ve been quizzing people on what they’re thinking.…

I arrived home from work earlier to find a surprise gift on my kitchen table. It was a packet of hot chocolate with a note to say it was from Poppy and Zoë. I was touched but a bit puzzled as to why they’d suddenly decided drinking chocolate was the ‘must have’ gift for me.…