My 7 year old daughter has taken focalin xr for 6 mos. and has developed facial and large muscle tics within the last week. Can medicine be the culprit? No history of tic disorder or tourette's in family.
Sydney's mom
My 7 year old daughter has taken focalin xr for 6 mos. and has developed facial and large muscle tics within the last week. Can medicine be the culprit? No history of tic disorder or tourette's in family.
Sydney's mom
7 May 2010
i really don't have an answer to your question but my 10 yr old son has been on focalin xr for about a year. during this time he seems to have developed the ticks part of tourettes. like you there is no history in either side of our family so i looked the medicine up online for side effects and it is possible to develope tourettes with this medicine. we had moved and he was off the medicine for about month, now that he is back on it it seems that the tics have gotten worse. i was recently told to stop the medication immediatley. he also started to have tremors in his hands. here is the link to the web page i went to that has data from the FDA http://www.drugs.com/pro/focalin.html
close to the bottom of the page is Adverse Findings in Clinical Trials with Focalin it said it is rare but it is possible. then a little lower than that is Other reactions include: it is listed there again about tourettes. hope this was helpful. to be honest i dont think i would recomed this medicine if i were a doc.
14 Dec 2010
My son was on Focalin XR last year for 6 months when he was 7 yrs old and also developed the facial tics. I also know another mother that the same thing happened to her son. I took my son off of the medication and despite pressure from the school, (since last year he was able to focus better while on Focalin and the tics didn't start until school was over) I am opting to find an alternative more natural treatment that can hopefully fix the underlying issue.
Pls. Let me know if you find something else for focus. We just started our 14year old back on focalinxr today after a three year break. Coming off of it about 8-9 hrs. Later the ticks r back.
13 Dec 2011
my 7yr old son has been on focalin xr for 5months now and 4days ago we noticed his eyes were developing tics. blinking tightly... his doctor said to stop medicine for 7days to see if this stops. doctor believes this is a delayed reaction to the focalin. (side effect) he said 5to 10 percent of children develop the tics. i will not put him back on medicine. he also takes guanfacine .5 mg 3x day non stimulant.
18 Jan 2012
My daughter started taking Focalin XR a year and a half ago, when she was 7. Within 3 months she developed facial, arm and body tics. I quickly associated it with the med, and took her off it. Her Doctor told me the medicine could not cause the tics, but can make them more profound. Yet, she had never exhibited any form of tic prior to use. Since she has been off, they have continued and at times have gotten progressively worse. I am frustrated with trying to find a cause, and personally feel that somehow this medicine created her now diagnosed Tourettes Syndrome. Again, no history or tic disorder in our family either. Has your daughter gotten any better?
my 7yr old son since being removed from focalin xr has improved but 4wks after stopping the meds we are noticing he still has facial tics with his eyes. he says his eyes hurt. doctor said this is no longer from the focalin since he has been off the meds for 4wks now. we see his eye doctor this week and i hope to get some answers. i pray this is not from the focalin permanant damage!
Both of my 7 year old twins have ADHD. My daughter was on Vyvanse since the beginning of the school year and about a month ago she started having terrible anxiety. We switched her to Focalin and she's doing really well... so far. My son has been on Focalin since September and he is also doing well in school, but just the the past couple weeks we noticed a tic developing. It took me a while to figure out that was what it was. I thought he was clowning around, but it has gotten progressively worse and now I know it is clearly a tic. I am going to stop the medication to see if it's any better. This is all very upsetting to read. This doesn't go away after the medicatin is stopped???
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after a week of the ween. Hypersensitivity to the face. Did the side effects go away or are ongoing?
tics syndrome... had an eeg done and it came back perfect..not ceasars. i want to take him off the meds but dont know if i can just have him STOP ...
The Dr. discontinued Geodon and Vyvanse and prescribed this after the child started experiencing severe facial tics.
continuous eye blinking and head nodding
My son is doing the same thing. Ive taken him off as well do these side effects go away or are they permanent???
That's my concern as well. It has been nearly a year that my daughter has stopped using Focalin XR, and she still has tics as bad as they were when she was taking the medication. Some days are absolutely horrible, other days... you would never notice. Not a lot of help from the medical community on the matter either. But again, she never had any tic what so ever prior to taking the med.
Our son tried vyvance and focalin at different times about 3 + years ago and got bad tics. We tried lowering the doses and the tics always returned. Facial/blinking eys and arms and hands constantly being stretched out. The last 3 years we have had him on ability and intuniv. Huge struggle in school with focus. Recently took him off of the ability, due to anger issues and weight gain. Today (at age 14) we started him back on 10mg. Of focalin with 2mg. Intuniv. Had a great day with focus 9 hours later this evening got the arm tics back. We are cutting the focalin to half(5mg) tomorrow to see if the tics return. The problem with these tics are so hard to deal with for our kids and their peers are not always kind. I do believe the tics started when he first started taking the stimulants. The years off of the stimulants still suffers from mild tics but usually seems to be caused by frustration when doing homework.