From: Cheryl
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 8:42 AM
Subject: your strategy - a huge success! thank you!

Dear Dr. Levine,

I just had to take a few minutes to email you our sincerest thank you for the information on your website about mass negative practice to eliminate tics. In a desperate internet search this past Saturday morning (and I did many searches) I discovered your site and strategy. My husband and I immediately went to work with our 5 year old son. What an amazing response he had! Within just a couple of hours he went from ticing every 3 - 4 seconds to ticing every 10 - 15 mins. We persisted over the next 1 - 2 days working on your strategy anytime he did his tic at home. Each day his tic got less and less. The strong hiccup/gasping tic which had persisted for more then 3 weeks is now virtually non-existent after only 3 days of practice. We are truly stunned since the other strategies I read about (giving him a competing behaviour, i.e. lips together & deep breath through the nose) did absolutely nothing to help him. Extended family members are just shocked.

Your strategy was easy to do, my 5 year old was fairly happy to comply with it, even our older son assisted by asking the 5 year old to repeat his tic 10 times when we were not in the room. At the moment, there appears to be some replacement of the original tic with throat clearing. It's not near as frequent or strong a tic, and we are all far happier to hear throat clearing vs. the gasping/hiccup tic which had heads turning when we were out in public! I plan to address throat clearing with your strategy shortly but it is not too bad and I wanted to give him a bit of a rest period.

Please feel free to share our success story with any future parents. I hope more research and information regarding this strategy will be done for tic disorders and tourettes. Despite doctors telling me just "wait and see", I believed as a peds. OT, that if I could teach my son strategies early in life to overcome the tic he would be further ahead vs. simply waiting and allowing the tic to become more ingrained. I cannot express to you in words how much we appreciate your time in making this information available on the net. Yours was the only site I came across that provided a concrete strategy to help and it worked! It's professionals like yourself that are truly making a difference. Many, many thanks from our entire family!

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