Last year when everything REALLY intensified in the Spring with Ellie’s Tourette Syndrome… I was just trying to figure out what it even was and spending countless hours and hours and hours researching and Googling and TikToking and Instagramming trying to immerse myself in the world of TS. As a mom, I felt an urgent responsibility to prepare my child AND those around her when it came to public interactions.

Hi, here I am, not even five feet tall and I all of a sudden have the weight of the world on my shoulders and have been assigned the job of making sure Ellie knows she’s okay to be herself in public and then make sure the public knows it’s okay for Ellie to be herself in public but also simultaneously freaking out about some of her more lewd tics and OKAY ALRIGHT HOW DO I EVEN GET STARTED???!

I started drafting up templates, lists, anything I could to do TWO different crucial things:

1) Stay organized/record what was going on
2) Find a way to COMMUNICATE and EDUCATE Ellie’s condition before people jumped to their own conclusions

The key with Tourette syndrome is communication. Think about it… has there ever been a time where you jumped to a conclusion that someone was acting out or being strange and you assumed it was drugs, or alcohol, or aggression… just to find out they were actually suffering from some kind of mental or neurological condition? It is my job to serve as a professional communicator on behalf of Ellie and her Tourette syndrome now so that people don’t say horrible things to or about her.

That is a lot. It’s a LOT to deal with. It’s a lot of responsibility. It’s a lot of repeating yourself and a lot of reinventing the wheel each time. So… I made templates! I came up with quick ways to copy and paste an email or to print out something that needed to be communicated on Ellie’s behalf in order to avoid awkward moments and to ensure we were all on the same page when it came to her Tourette syndrome.

Instead of keeping them to myself, I put them in Canva (THE EASIEST SITE TO US, AND FREE!) and made sure they were customizable for ANYONE to take them and make them their own! Why not? We have 12 different templates and printables available now in the Five Waves Shop via digital download. It’s THIS easy:

1) Buy the download
2) Receive the PDF via email
3) Two links on the PDF – one is a VIDEO walk through on how to edit your templates and the other link is the link to the templates themselves.

EASY!!! If you pick them up and need some help navigating or have questions, let me know and I’m an email away! I hope these are helpful to you in your journey with Tourette’s or as an advocate for someone with TS. See the image below for what’s included!

SHOP HERE (ONLY $7) – CLICK HERE

We are so thankful for our TS community and we hope this helps you!!! XOXO