Sensitive look at kids who have Tourette's
In a perfect world, every child would be perfect. Childhood can be brutal. Kids can be as cruel as it gets when one of them suffers from an easily ridiculed trait or malady. Few malaises are as susceptible to this as Tourette's syndrome. TV is at least partially responsible, for often presenting it as an affliction that causes a victim to suddenly blurt out four-letter profanities.
This might strike some as funny but there is nothing humorous about the disease, especially when the person suffering from it is too young to even know any four-letter words. Moreover, far more common manifestations are tics, twitches or coughing. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is said to be a form of Tourette's.
I Have Tourette's But Tourette's Doesn't Have Me is a poignant exploration of the vicious effect the affliction has on youngsters, who, in their own words, would give anything to be just like everyone else. On average, at least one child in every school suffers from Tourette's syndrome, which is hereditary but not contagious, according to the HBO special.
The success of the program is that it manages to avoid devolving into the maudlin despite heart-rending accounts of what it is like to be very young and have to learn to live with it.
A girl about 11 recounts how, "Everyone at school is making fun of me. They call me retard or monster."
A boy of roughly the same age laments, "The hardest thing is you can't make friends as easily as someone else."
Something as mundane as having a substitute teacher, unfamiliar with each student's idiosyncrasies, can be torturous to a child with Tourette's.
As downcast as this might sound, I Have Tourette's But Tourette's Doesn't Have Me is a watchable half-hour, thanks to the upbeat, "I can overcome this" attitude of the young people profiled.
It also avoids the trap of giving screen time to a procession of deadly dull medical and psychological experts. The challenge of coping with Tourette's is told through the words of youngsters suffering from it but determined to forge a normal life.
In another time, this would have been dramatized into a disease-of-the-week TV movie. HBO is to be commended for taking a higher road and for tackling a subject that obviously won't drive subscriptions but might open some minds.
Source: Sun Sentinel
DVD available from TSA-USA A sample clip of the program can be viewed on the TSA-USA site!
In a perfect world, every child would be perfect. Childhood can be brutal. Kids can be as cruel as it gets when one of them suffers from an easily ridiculed trait or malady. Few malaises are as susceptible to this as Tourette's syndrome. TV is at least partially responsible, for often presenting it as an affliction that causes a victim to suddenly blurt out four-letter profanities.
This might strike some as funny but there is nothing humorous about the disease, especially when the person suffering from it is too young to even know any four-letter words. Moreover, far more common manifestations are tics, twitches or coughing. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is said to be a form of Tourette's.
I Have Tourette's But Tourette's Doesn't Have Me is a poignant exploration of the vicious effect the affliction has on youngsters, who, in their own words, would give anything to be just like everyone else. On average, at least one child in every school suffers from Tourette's syndrome, which is hereditary but not contagious, according to the HBO special.
The success of the program is that it manages to avoid devolving into the maudlin despite heart-rending accounts of what it is like to be very young and have to learn to live with it.
A girl about 11 recounts how, "Everyone at school is making fun of me. They call me retard or monster."
A boy of roughly the same age laments, "The hardest thing is you can't make friends as easily as someone else."
Something as mundane as having a substitute teacher, unfamiliar with each student's idiosyncrasies, can be torturous to a child with Tourette's.
As downcast as this might sound, I Have Tourette's But Tourette's Doesn't Have Me is a watchable half-hour, thanks to the upbeat, "I can overcome this" attitude of the young people profiled.
It also avoids the trap of giving screen time to a procession of deadly dull medical and psychological experts. The challenge of coping with Tourette's is told through the words of youngsters suffering from it but determined to forge a normal life.
In another time, this would have been dramatized into a disease-of-the-week TV movie. HBO is to be commended for taking a higher road and for tackling a subject that obviously won't drive subscriptions but might open some minds.
Source: Sun Sentinel
DVD available from TSA-USA A sample clip of the program can be viewed on the TSA-USA site!
