Yarn, Tics, and My Remarkable Daughter: What Tourette’s Really Looks Like

I want to tell you about my daughter, Imogen.

She is 18 years old. She plays the piano and flute. She sings beautifully. She crochets. She is funny, and kind, and tougher than most people twice her age will ever need to be. She also has Tourette Syndrome — and I’m writing this today, on Tourette Awareness Day, because I think the world needs to understand what that actually means.

Not the version they joke about on television. The real version. The one we live with every day.

How It Started
In late 2020, in the thick of the Covid pandemic, we started noticing something different about Imogen. Small things at first — movements, sounds — that we couldn’t quite explain. We’re fairly certain the stress and upheaval of Covid brought it to the surface, because there had never been any sign of it before. But there it was.

What followed was a year of not really having a name for it. That’s something a lot of people don’t know: you have to have lived with both motor and vocal tics for at least a year before a diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome can be given. Until that point, Imogen simply had a tic disorder. Same symptoms. Same daily challenges. Just no label yet.

In 2022, she got her diagnosis.

What Tourettes Actually Is
Tourettes Syndrome is a neurological condition characterised by repetitive, involuntary movements and vocalisations called tics. The key word there is involuntary — Imogen cannot simply choose to stop. It is not a behaviour. It is not rudeness. It is not something that can be fixed with a stern word or a disapproving look.

Motor tics can include things like blinking, jerking, or — as in Imogen’s case — more physical movements that can, at times, cause harm. There were periods where she would punch walls or tables. Her dad and I have both been on the receiving end of a sudden smack. The hardest moments were when it involved her little sister, Ella. Ella, to her enormous credit, has always been understanding — but she is human, and there were times it really upset her. That is not Imogen’s fault. That is Tourettes.

Vocal tics can range from throat clearing and humming to words or sounds. Over time, Imogen developed copropraxia — involuntary rude gestures — and more recently, coprolalia, which causes her to blurt out offensive words or comments entirely against her will. Coprolalia is perhaps the most misunderstood symptom of all, and one of the rarest — fewer than 10-15% of people with Tourettes have it. It is the thing people laugh at in films. It is not funny when it is your daughter, trying to navigate the world as a young woman, desperately apologising for something her brain did without her permission.

She always apologises. Every single time.

The Year Music Was Taken From Her
For years, Imogen found her peace at the piano. Music was her anchor — the place she could go when the tics were exhausting, when the world felt too loud, when she needed to feel like herself. She is genuinely, breathtakingly talented.

This year, as she was preparing for her Music A Level, Tourettes took that from her too.
Her tics escalated so severely that she couldn’t sit near a piano without struggling. She couldn’t place her fingers on the keys. She couldn’t perform. She had to withdraw from her course — a course she had worked so hard for, that she loved, that was tied up in who she is and who she wants to be. It is very difficult to play piano at a recital when your own body won’t cooperate.

I am not going to pretend that wasn’t devastating. It was. For all of us, but most of all for her.

Where Crafting Came In
Imogen has crocheted for a long time — this wasn’t a new discovery. But when music was suddenly unavailable to her, she turned back to crafting with a new purpose. Crochet, among other things, became a way to calm her mind when everything else felt impossible.

There is something about crochet that is quietly, profoundly therapeutic — and I say this not just as her mum, but as someone who teaches crochet and has watched it work its gentle magic on people. The rhythm of it. The repetition. The way your hands find a pattern and your brain follows, settling into something steady and predictable.

For people with Tourettes, that kind of focused, absorbing activity can genuinely reduce tic frequency. When the brain is deeply engaged — counting stitches, following a pattern, creating something row by row — there is less room for the tics to break through. It is not a cure. It is not a switch that turns Tourettes off. And I won’t pretend it delivered an hour of perfect calm every time. Sometimes it was ten minutes. But ten minutes of quiet in a loud, exhausting day? That is not nothing. That is everything.

I would hope that every person living with Tourettes finds their own version of that. It might not be crochet. It might be drawing, or walking, or knitting, or baking — anything that gives the mind something gentle to hold onto. But what is the harm in trying? If a hook and some yarn can offer even a few minutes of peace, it is worth picking up.

What I Want You to Know
Tourettes has been in the news a lot lately, and not always kindly. I have seen comments suggesting that people with Tourettes shouldn’t be allowed in theatres. Shouldn’t be allowed to fly. Should, essentially, stay home and stay quiet so that other people aren’t inconvenienced.

I want to ask those people to spend one day in Imogen’s shoes. Just one.
She is not an inconvenience. She is not something to be managed or excluded. She is a young woman who has navigated more in eighteen years than most people face in a lifetime — and she has done it with grace, and humour, and a stubbornness that makes me more proud than I can say.

And yes — we do laugh sometimes. Imogen laughs too. When Tourettes does something absurd, laughter is a valid response, and Imogen would be the first to tell you that. Finding moments of lightness in a difficult condition is not disrespectful — it is survival. It is love. It is how we get through.

But there is an enormous difference between laughing with someone and laughing at them. Between understanding and dismissing. Between seeing the whole person and only seeing the tics.

On This Tourettes Awareness Day
If you have read this far, thank you.

If you see someone in public with tics — a jerk, a sound, a word that shocks you — please, before you stare or comment or judge, remember Imogen. Remember that they didn’t choose this. Remember that they are doing the bravest thing imaginable: just going about their day.

And if you know someone with Tourettes who is struggling — whether they are a child, a teenager, or a young adult trying to find their feet — perhaps suggest they pick up a crochet hook. It won’t fix anything. But it might give them an hour of calm. A row of something beautiful. A small, soft reminder that they are more than their condition.
Imogen is proof of that every single day.

Written with love, and with Imogen’s blessing.