Latie2

I've never heard of taurine (I'm pretty new at this) but I give my son 250 mg of magnesium, twice a day, and some B-complex vitamins once a day. I do this knowing that that is technically too high a dose of mag. I figure it's poorly absorbed and I'm watchful for signs of overdose. I really, really feel I see a difference. In fact, he'll often be really cracking his neck a lot before I give it to him, but not doing it soon after. I didn't tell him until today that I thought it was helpful for tics (he wanted to know why he had to take it but not his sister). He chews up the tablet (yecch) and I give him 3 mini marshmallows to kill the taste, after. At the same time, before I started giving him supplements, I could see his tics wax and wane a bit. So who knows? I think I feel much better, doing something that might work, than doing nothing. Although I need to call his neurologist to get him to weigh in on this. ~Latie

The PANDAS stuff...my son hasn't shown symptoms of strep throat. It has gone around his school. I will look into that. No vaccines recently (in the last few years). Thanks for your suggestions.

Hi Faith, Thank you for your reply, and your suggestions. My son is very into a few of his X-Box games, and I only limit them in the usual, "don't want to do too much screen time" way of most parents. I don't know that I want to take that away from my son right now. I am all about trying to surreptitiously give him good memories and good times. But I'll definitely think about it. Since his tics don't really bother him (so he says?) I don't know if he'd be on board with the experiment of giving up X-Box games. My son is 9. My sister says she had Tourette's visibly as a teenager; I don't remember it. And my son also looks to me to have ADHD, although it's not affecting his grades or anything. More, his teachers have told me it's hard to hold his attention, and when I've observed him with his class, he certainly seems more active, even when sitting! That's so not what I wanted to write, though. I wanted to be one of those folks who can say, 'no family history of tics.' This is so obviously not under my control. Anyway, it does give me hope that your tics passed under the radar, and that maybe the "shelf-life" of the head/neck stuff, won't be too bad. Thanks again...

Wow. Just b/c you articulated being in exactly the same spot I am, your post really really helped.

Does anyone know of anyone whose kid outgrew this motor tic? My son's is fairly major. I think he skipped all the minor, throat-clearing, eye blinking ones and just went right to head-jerking. It's been a month, and although it waxes and wanes occasionally (for no good reason...once it was much better at the end of a long school day, can be bad first thing in the morning) it sure seems to want to stick around. I'm surprised that it's not easy to find info about things like: chances in general of outgrowing a motor tic, of childhood. Promising signs, vs. symptoms that suggest it's unlikely to go away. My kid is showing up for life just great, and for the most part, it seems like other kids are accepting this. But you all know just how I feel. I want it gone. And I want to know the chances of that happening within a year, for one thing. I don't know what could help me to accept it (and believe me, we are very matter-of-fact about it with our son), but maybe if there's bad news coming and I know it, that would help. So did anyone have a kid whose motor tic was not minor but went away? Ever? Sigh... My screen name is b/c I'm up late googling....late....Latie....that's probably something I need to stop.