How to Tame OCD in Your Children

This article will NOT tell you how to eliminate OCD in your children. However, I will provide some practical ideas and resources to help you tame the OCD in your children. These ideas and strategies will take the wild, unpredictable, and the unknown out of the diagnosis, and will replace it with calm certainty that you and your child can cope successfully with OCD.

Because OCD can be treated, you and your child can look forward to the future with optimism and hope. With proper treatment, your child can learn to manage the symptoms and return to the childhood
pleasures of fun, learning, and friendship.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A Positive Mindset
• Support
• A Willingness to Seek Out Professional Help

1. 
    
   Study to Understand

   Understand the Diagnosis. Obsessive compulsive disorder, known as OCD for short, consists of both obsessions (persistent fears or doubts and upsetting thoughts or images that a child cannot ignore or dismiss) and compulsions (repetitive actions or rituals intended to relieve the anxiety caused by the obsessions. The relief is temporary, however, because performing compulsions ultimately reinforces the obsessions.)
   
   OCD strikes 1 in 50 adults, and 1 in 100 children.

2. 
    
   Child Psychiatrist and Child Cognitive Behavior Therapist

   Find the right treatment team. If you have insurance, take out your insurance card. Look on the back: it will have a number for mental health or behavioral health. Call that number, and tell the representative that you need an in-network to a child psychiatrist, and also to a child therapist who specializes in cognitive behavior therapy for OCD. The psychiatrist is an MD who specializes in childhood problems and prescribes medication. The child therapist will work with your child to help him/her understand the disorder and learn how to cope with the symptoms successfully.

3. 
    
   Proudly Support and Guide Your Child or Children with OCD

   Learn How to Recognize and Respond to the Symptoms at Home. Be sure that both you and your partner are actively involved in the treatment. Check out the resources as the end of this article, and educate yourself on how you can be a helpful coach to your child. By learning about the treatment, and by asking the child therapist to give you therapy assignments to carry out with your child in between therapy sessions, you will become an active coach, helping the child tame the OCD lion. In terms of responding to the OCD, support your child, but confront the OCD with the techniques you learn from your child's therapist.

Tips & Warnings

• Reassure yourself as a parent. OCD is not caused by a parenting style, nor is it a sign of misbehavior or lack of self control. It has a genetic component, and just needs treatment.
• Get support through a support group or organization in your area.
• Don't expect immediate changes. Realize that your child's recovery will have ebbs and flows.
• Your child will have times of temper flares. Remember that this may be part of the OCD, but hold your child accountable. Remember the 1-2-3 Magic Rule: No Talking, No Emotion, but do give consequences.

Resources

• Freeing Your Child from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Powerful, Practical Program for Parents of Children and Adolescents
• Free PDF Download: How to Help Your Child : A Parent's Guide to OCD
• Helping Your Child with OCD : A Workbook for Parents and Children with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
• A Thought Is Just A Thought: A Story of Living with OCD
• Up and Down the Worry Hill: A Children's Book about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and its Treatment

[gahazeleyes]

on 6/13/2009 Very good article, thanks for sharing.

[Mindee94]

on 6/8/2009 Interesting points... thank you for contributing.

[successfactors]

on 5/6/2009 Thanks, all, for your nice remarks.

[evgnspaces]

on 5/4/2009 Very helpful article on OCD in Children.

[makaksa]

on 5/4/2009 Nice article on how to tame OCD in your children.