04/16/2026
If your child's tics seem to ramp up in the evening, you're not imagining it.
For a lot of families, bedtime is the most difficult part of the day. The tics are louder, more frequent, harder to settle through. And after a long day, it can feel completely overwhelming for everyone involved.
Here's what's actually going on.
During the day, there's a lot of distraction. School, activities, conversations, screens. When the brain is focused on something else, tics often reduce. It's not suppression exactly, more that attention is elsewhere.
Come the evening, things wind down. The stimulation drops, the structure falls away, and there's nothing pulling focus in a different direction. Tics tend to fill that space.
On top of that, tiredness plays a role. A fatigued brain has fewer resources to regulate, and tics tend to increase as a result. It's similar to how any neurological symptom often worsens with exhaustion.
There's also the anxiety loop to consider. If a child knows bedtime is when tics get bad, they can start to dread it, and that anxiety feeds directly back into tic frequency.
None of this means the evenings have to stay like this.
Understanding the pattern is the first step. From there, there are practical strategies, including elements of CBIT, that can make a real difference to how evenings feel for the whole family.
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