Reply to Child faking Tourette’s?

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[quote=Anonymous]It doesn’t sound like he is faking for attention or to mock people.

This is actually really complicated and people on here will give you inconsistent advice.  My daughter has Tourette’s that manifested in middle school and improved so that it is rarely noticeable by college.

Tourette’s is a neueological conditions. The brain is weird and poorly understood.  There is some possibility that for some people seeing other people with tics can trigger this, the way that seeing someone yawn can trigger yawns or seeing flashing lights can trigger seizures in some people.   Anxiety makes it worse as can being tired (both of which are common in teens).   People can also have viral or bacterial triggers (like strep) which either act as an initial prompt for ribs or make tics worse.  (For us, tics are an almost infallible screening test for strep.).

The first line advice for tics is just to ignore them, so basically do that and see what happens.  There is medicine but it’s not very effective and has side effects so only used when the tics are disabling.  There is also a special type of cognitive behavioral therapy that can help.  My kid did that but I don’t know if that helped or if they were just growing out of them anyway.

Definitely do not punish or shame them for it as calling attention to tics generally makes it worse.  Try to keep an eye on them in quiet moments to see how often they occur.  I didn’t really notice my kids until we were home over winter break and I could observe it happening when my kid was sitting reading or snacking.

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