Tic question

[hearts and roses]

It is also important to remember that lying, in and of itself, is often perceived as a type of tic or symptom of Tourette's Syndrome. I know that small lies were a part of my daughter's disorder. It did not excuse her lies, but knowing this helped us to gauge which lies were worthy of our attention and which lies were harmless and not in need of our attention specifically. After all, who among us has NEVER told a teeny tiny lie? If her lie was school related, it was in difficult child's best interest to allow her to suffer the natural consequences of her lies and allow her teacher to handle it and we would cooperate. This shows difficult child that her lies will not be tolerated at home or at school.

**I should say here that difficult child almost never really displayed vocal or physical tics outside our home, maybe only at a friends home on occasion. She mostly felt safe at home in allowing her tics to show.

I want to be clear that I'm not saying you don't do anything, after all, the entire family deserves to live in a home that is comfortable for everyone, but you should work with a psychiatrist skilled in CBT before trying any technique on your own to change your son's behaviors. I personally am against aversion therapy without A) guidance from a therapist experienced with CBT, and, B) until after you are certain your son truly has a behavior he can have control over. If you use aversion therapy on a behavior that is truly a tic or that is difficult to control, it (the tic) will most assuredly come out one way or another.

 

[TerryJ2]

Bless you, MWM and Marg, you stole the words right out of my mouth. Or off of my keyboard.

I've often thought my son did certain behaviors just to bug me. In fact, he has told me so. But it's really easy to figure out if he is. Just go with-the flow. And imitate it, in fact. If it's something you really, really hate and you really, really think he's doing it deliberately, take an hr out of your schedule (you wouldn't be getting anything done anyway) and sit down with-him and do what he's doing. Now, licking his lip sounds like a stimulant or tic. But tapping a spoon could be more ADHD, nerves, whatever. I've imitated difficult child's pencil/spoon/fork thing to the point where I have a regular orchestra going (or at least, a makeshift repertoire like Bert in Mary Poppins ). difficult child will ignore me at first, then laugh, then get mad.
The next day, when he starts up, I grab the spoon (or whatever) and make like I'm ready to roll and he stops immediately.

Now, one thing my difficult child does is cut his fingernails terribly short. They are easily halfway down the nail bed. When I pointed it out to the pediatrician last summer, difficult child was very embarrassed and said he'd quit cutting them so short. Of course, that lasted a day, and he was back to it. I know he does NOT do that to bug me. It's just one of his little Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) quirks.

Anyway, I'm with-the others who pointed out stimming and tics.

I really like Keista's point of view about "lying," as well as the exercise with-aversion therapy.

 

[Marguerite]

The spoon/pencil tapping thing can also be a stimulant. difficult child 3 used to do it, it would drive his teachers nuts. But he did it when he was alone in a room too, so it was not done to annoy people.

Marg

 

[TerryJ2]

Good point about being alone in a room.

 

[busywend]

My difficult child told me (when she was older) that she could hold back the tics for only so long ( ie; at school) but as soon as she was able to (at home) she let them loose. She was more comfortable at home doing it so she kept it in check for as long as she could at school. I felt it was important for her to let them go as she needed and did not say anything to her at home.

She said it was a lot of work to keep it under control at school.

 

[wintak]

So the dr office called back. They want me to 1/2 the risperdal. And I can give him 1/2 a benadryl every 4-6 hours, although it might make him sleepy (so far NOTHING has made this kid sleepy at ALL) to help stop the movements. I most likely won't do the benadryl

AND I heard from most of his teachers... He is losing focus and his counselor at school said in the 5 minutes she observed him she counted 30 verbal sounds, did see the hitting of the hip with his fist, the agitation in his seat and she went on and on.

Dr office said we'll discuss other options at her appointment on Wed. But my OBVIOUS question would be...why did this take 4 mos to manifest???? and of course...is it even a side effect?

 

[keista]

Sounds like Dr thinks it's dystonia. My daughter had an episode of that and the ER gave her Benadryl, and her psychiatrist confirmed that that was absolutely what to give if it ever happened again. For my DD1 I think it was because of accidentally skipped medications - winter break always throws us off. However, she was on Wellbutrin SR 150mg and Paxil 10mg at the time ad psychiatrist said both of those had low incidence of dystonia as side effect, but as partial withdrawal, who knows?

From your description, though, it sounds more like stimming than dystonia. On the bright side, Benadryl is a the "magic bullet", the "go-to-guy" of the OTC world - fixes a whole bunch of stuff with minimal, if any, bad effects.

 

[Marguerite]

If it's stimming, redirection is best. If you try to eliminate the problem it just breaks out somewhere else. It's like trying to build a dam with mud bricks. You plug a leak here and the pressure makes the wall break down somewhere else. it is better to let the water flow under your control, than to have the entire dam fail.

However, hitting himself sounds like a stimulant that is not one to try to keep. He maybe needs someone to talk to him about them, ay "Some of these are okay to do, as long as you try to avoid disrupting things for other people. But please try to keep the impact down if you can."

Not all stimming is obvious - the classic hand flapping that people associated with autism is often because they watch their fingers as they flap them in front of their face, and the flicker of light through the fingers is what seems to soothe them. But for difficult child 3, he could just look at the flicker of light through the trees and it would soothe him. He never flapped, ever. But he would stare entranced at a tree. Or anything else that flickered.

Marg

 

[wintak]

interesting...counselor said he had flapped his hands, which he used to do when he was younger. That was before we knew anything might be seriously wrong. Never heard of this dystonia...will look it up.

 

[BusynMember]

If he is stimming, you can stop one stimulant, but another will take it's place. My son's stimming is much better and under more control now that he is older, however he was never ever punished for his stims. HOWEVER, he did try very hard to hold in vocal stims in public.

Stimming is not a behavior problem.

 

[keista]

As far as I understand, dystonia is more apt to involve large muscle groups and is "more involuntary" than either tics or stims.

All that kept going through my mind while I was trying to calm and get DD1 to ER was that if we were living in the middle ages, I would have been calling a priest to request an exorcism. DD1 was completely freaked out by it, and "wanted to cut her legs off just to make it stop."

Again, it doesn't seem like what you are describing, but the Dr ordering Benadryl, suggests that's what he thinks it might be. Benadryl is great for a gazillion things, but I've never heard it suggested for stims or tics - might work though since it essentially 'relaxes' the body.

 

[jennd23]

Just out of my own curiosity, how do you determine if its a stimulant or a tic "enhanced/started/caused" by medications? It sounds like you think even if they're medication induced there's an anxiety problem? When my son tried focalin within a few days he developed an eye blinking tic, it took a while for me torealize it was related to the medications, then when I realized it we took him off and the eye blinking stopped. I'm just curious about how you know which is which.

 

[keista]

Exactly the way you figured it out. Not all stims/tics are caused by anxiety, but it can be a factor, and should be a consideration unless it's obviously medication induced like in your case.

My son started to stimulant at 5. No medications until just before he turned 13. His "dying coyote" phase was at 11-12. He's not always anxious when he stims. It's just something he does because it makes him feel good.

 

[wintak]

Jennd23 - From what I can tell, you can't. But I could be wrong. I can tell you he had NO risperdal on Sunday, and 1/2 a serving on Monday and so far 1/4 serving today and I just got an email from one of his teachers saying it was worse than ever. Luckily we see the dr tomorrow at 9:30am. I have not done the benadryl because I really hate medicating anyone (including myself) and getting me to try ANY medications took a long time. He was on 5 at one time, now we're down to 2 mainly cuz I said the others weren't working (they were for different issues).

 

[hearts and roses]

Benadry makes my difficult child (and me) speed like nobody's business. Just an FYI: It doesn't relax everyone~like all medications, it effects people in different ways.

I see no harm in trying the benadry at least once just to see. Like you, it took me a long time (3 years) to finally give in to the medication suggestion for my difficult child way back when she was 10. She is now medication free.

 

[Marguerite]

Antidepressants can also reduce anxiety and thereby reduce the need to stimulant. difficult child 3 is taking citaloprim and says he feels less anxious overall. I've noticed less vocal stimming.

difficult child 1 has been on Zoloft for nearly 15 years and it made a big difference to him. Recently their sister was put on Zoloft and again, she is much calmer and more able to cope without falling apart. Her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is less obvious than difficult child 1's but has also reduced on the Zoloft.

Marg