If you’re
tasked with caring for a child with OCD, whether your own or someone else’s,
you know how difficult it can be to stay calm when things go awry. A child will
have a wildly irrational fear of something – like knives, or some kind of food
– and will need to engage in repetitive, ritualistic behavior – like humming or
washing hands, or counting and re-counting steps. When you know full well the
child’s anxieties are totally unfounded, and their behaviors completely unhelpful,
you want to do for them what you’d want someone to do for you: explain things
away through logic and reasoning, enlighten them with your experience and
easily verifiable knowledge.
In a very helpful article for Turning Point
Psychology, psychologist Anna Prudovski points out how and why
those knee-jerk caregiver behaviors are, in fact, counter-productive. Those are
in her “Don’t” list. Thankfully, however, she lists twice as many “Do’s” as
“Don’t’s,” explaining how OCD must be understood as independent of the
afflicted.
For
instance, she advises giving the OCD a derogatory name, like “Cruella DeVille.”
Or just saying, “OCD is making you feel like you need to count all the forks.”
RELATED: Does your child have OCD?
Or, as
Prudovski puts it, “It is not really important which arguments the OCD uses to
get the child to perform a compulsion. It’s very important, though, to point
out to the child that it’s the OCD – the glitch/ the bully/ the brain bug/ the
silly hiccup/ Mr. Clean – that is speaking up now. Therefore, address the
process by pointing out the offender (the OCD) and not the content of the
obsessions. Tell your child, ‘The OCD is trying to trick you again.’ Or ask,
‘Is 'the meanie dude' trying to bully you?’”
More helpful
hints include encouraging the child to postpone or change rituals, and then ask
afterwards, “Did what you expect happen?” or, “Was it as bad as you expected?”
It’s a
very helpful read. When you are advised to “be kind” and “be compassionate,” you’re
not always given tips on exactly how to do that. Prudovski does.
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