That sounds alot like what is called the waxing and waning of tics. They will increase in intensity and then stop. Suddenly a new one may pop up out of no where. My son also does a throat clearing sniffing thing that was attributed to allergies but is a tic. He also does a blinking that was originally called allergies. The most significant one for my son is a stutter. He is not a stutterer though b/c of where the breaks occur. The pediatrician thought it was his brain going faster than he could talk.
Depending on who said they weren't tics you may want to look at again. I ended up with a pediatric neurologist
