chansmith11

How do you find balance with looking for triggers and making sure your child doesn't think her tics are bad? We are just starting this process and my DS is very much conscious of her tics and she doesn't like that she has them. We are trying to find her triggers and will be seeing various dr's. I want to make sure that we navigate this properly and don't make her feel anymore self-conscious than she already is. I don't want her to look at them badly or feel badly because she has them.

Wow, been busy. I've just now had a chance to get back on here. I wanted to add to my daughter's story. Her tics are definitely stress/anxiety and sleep related. They originally started when she got sick the first week of kindergarten at school. She was so afraid of throwing up again that she developed severe anxiety and then the tics started. She did great over the summer until the eye infection. In september a little girl in her after school program was being really mean (having trouble sharing friends, jealousy issues) and they were really bad at that time. She didn't understand why the little girl was being so mean and had a hard time with it. She has worked through the emotional aspect of it now. She has had the strep tests and it came back negative (no strep antibodies). I am really hoping to find an exceptional dr. Today we are starting a milk elimination diet to see if we notice a difference and plan to do the challenge on saturday. We have already tried wheat and there was no difference at all. Something that I have noticed is how much more tired she is now after a day of school especially when she has bad tic days. Her little body is just no exhausted from moving all day long.

I wanted to post and say Hi! I'm new and will be trolling the boards for a while trying to gain any new information I can. Here is a little background. My daughter started last year with a shoulder tic. At first we thought she might have a pulled muscle and took her to see the ped. He diagnosed her with a tic, told us to ignore it and it would go away. We did and it did go away. She had three-four episodes that school year where it would come and go. Fast forward through the summer, no tics. At the end of the summer she woke up with an eye infection and the tics started back up. Looking back, I think this was the trigger. She started eye blinking and it hasn't stopped. I don't know if it was the infection or the stress from it. The eye infection really bothered her because it was very noticeable and her eye swelled up until it was almost closed. She moves between, eye blinking, throat clearing, a throat noise (not sure how to describe), head tilting, shoulder shrugging, arm jerking, and leg movements. It is really total body but not all at the same time. We know that stress, tiredness, excitement and anxiety are all triggers for her. We are searching for the root cause. I'm halfway through the natural treatments book and it is very informative and gives us a lot of hope. I'm very overwhelmed right now though. I don't know where to start, we are in the process of looking for a different dr. I want to pursue the osteopathic path. We have a neurologist appt in two weeks at the local children's hospital. I'm skeptical. We do not want to pursue medicines but want to do all the we can for her.