Dr. David Coleman

In most situations, the tics will fade away.

And again, if you draw children's attention to them, they may just come to realize, oh, I am actually doing this thing, which has become so habitual for me that I haven't even noticed that I'm doing it.

And then they can maybe actively try to do something differently instead of the tics.

So it is worth, I suppose, paying enough attention to.

I mean, you can certainly go in and chat to

Maybe his teacher and see, you know, it's coming near the end, I guess, of sixth class.

Maybe there's a certain element of pressure there for him.

And so, yeah, go and chat to the teacher just in case there is something going on in school that you're not aware of that might be putting pressure on them or if you know that there's other sources of stress.

by all means, try to reduce the stresses on him.

But it's not necessarily that the two are a causal link.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, it's very tricky.

I mean, I think so many of the issues that parents are having now, particularly with teenage boys, are internet related.

And so they're very influenced by stuff that they're seeing on social media.

And so a lot of it is about shredding in terms of losing any kind of excess fat and then also bulking up in terms of building muscle mass.

So there's a particular...

body shape body style that boys are often trying to achieve and you know in some ways i mean elements of it will be healthy but elements of it then can also become very dangerous in as much as you know it could lead them to a fixation on their food on their calories which could in turn lead to an eating disorder so i think it is worth tracking it's certainly not worth fighting with him about it unless you're convinced that it's having a really negative impact on him and so maybe rather than

talking about the calories and the food and trying to control for him what he's eating or how he's approaching food, maybe just become a little bit more curious as to what is it that he's chasing?

What is he looking for?

What is it about the body shape or the body style that he particularly likes?