good1

During two brief periods of time during mid-summer into early Fall when my son was 7 and then 8 years old, he had bouts of tics. He was rolling his eyes, smelling his fingers repeatedly, saying certain things, and making grunting and humming noises. Both times this happened, I gave him magnesium and things got better and I sort of thought it was just something he went through and was over. He has always had periodic worry thoughts, however, things like wondering if a burglar would come to our house, different worries like this would come and go but never enough to disrupt his life, more like passing things. Fast forward to age 12 and with the same timing (began mid-summer) my son now seems to have pronounced OCD symptoms. It is much more pronounced than anything I've seen before and it is affecting him daily. He is worried often that he has cancer or that his heart is not beating correctly, that it's skipping or going too fast and he is going to have a heart attack. He is touching the floor repeatedly, running his hand over the top of chairs and the inside edge of doors throughout the day. He is blowing on plants and straightening rugs on the floor. At night before bedtime he is often crying and afraid to go to sleep, thinking that he will die in his sleep. He really seems to think he has or is going to have cancer. It is so very sad and upsetting. There's more than this with the OCD but that's a brief picture. It's now taking him 3 hours to get through a half hours worth of homework. Getting him to school in the morning is painful because he has slowed down doing everything. I think he is preoccupied with his fear thoughts. In addition to this, he was diagnosed with ADD at age 7. Because of his history with tics at ages 7 and 8, however, we've never been able to give him ADD drugs (Psychiatrist said ADD drugs are too risky for a patient with any history of tics). He has asthma and a lot of allergies and food sensitivities (he is year around allergic to trees, grasses, dust mites, molds, peanuts, cashews, egg white, certain medications) and sometimes I think that's responsible for a lot of his issues. For this and other reasons, I really don't like the idea of putting him on any psychiatric medications for OCD or anxiety. I've been trying to research alternatives to medication for his OCD and inositol keeps coming up as something that could help him. What I can't find, however, is any credible source that tells me what a safe dosage of inositol could be for my 12 year old son. I see written that 18 grams has been shown helpful for OCD but that is always written about for an adult. What amount of inositol could I safely give my son to see if it might be helpful to him for this OCD? I would contact his pediatrician to ask but mainstream doctors never seem to have knowledge about or agree to treating children with non-drug supplements. I would appreciate any information and would love to know of any specific experiences of others who've given their children inositol for OCD. Thank you!

Thank you, JJMom and EAMom, for all of your helpful information -- it is very appreciated. I've got a lot of work to do!

Hi, I'm new to the board and am in the midst of trying to figure out what is going on for my 7 year old son. He recently started acting differently -- it seemed to come on overnight. He started having tics like constantly smelling his fingers and then making humming noises and little grunts. He has had periods of jutting his jaw around and rolling his eyes, but I haven't seen that in a while. He is counting and saying the word "period" after counting to four, over and over again. I can hear him doing this throughout the day. Additionally, he is talking a lot more and saying some nonsensical things, and seems to be mumbling and talking to himself a lot. It is disconcerting. The things that lead me to wonder about PANDAS are the following: it came on suddenly (one day he was fine, the next he was doing these behaviors). He seems to have regressed in his behavior -- he breaks down and cries and argues like a 2 year old when he doesn't get his way. This was not typical behavior for him now at age 7, but it was when he was 2 or 3. He's also doing a fair amount of baby talk which is also not typical for him. He has started wetting his bed at night which is not something he did before. He also had a big canker sore on his mouth right around when all these behaviors started and although a canker sore is not strep throat, I read that canker sores can accompany strep, so I wonder about strep being in his system. The only other thing that has happened to my son that I wonder about is that about a month ago he unfortunately got hit in the jaw bone with a baseball bat while practicing for baseball. It did bruise there but wasn't a full hit, so we thought it would be OK. However, today I felt his jaw and there's a strange lump there. Then I read that it's possible for OCD symptoms to start for someone who's had an injury to the head, even up to a couple of months later. I feel like I'm grabbing at straws trying to figure out what is going on here, but it's the sudden nature of his behavior that's making me look to alternate reasons. We do not have a background of OCD or Tourettes in mine or my husband's family, so we are really confused. We're also very worried. My concern now as I try to figure out if PANDAS could possibly explain things, is that I don't think our pediatrician (or most local doctors) will take me seriously if I ask to have my son tested for PANDAS. I don't want to waste time with this and would really like to take my son to someone who understands PITANDS and knows exactly how to do the tests for it. Can anybody out there please refer me to a doctor in the San Jose bay are who can do this? Any other tips or advice for what to do to try and figure this all out would be very appreciated as well. Thanks in advance.