OCD and Fears

[airial95]

My son is only 3, so we always have the fun experience of trying to figure out what might be symptomatic vs just normal 3 year old behavior. Most often, we have to wait for symptoms to be present for several days/weeks before we can even figure it out. (For example, we started making weird "noises" - like fake one syllable words - always the same. Is this a new tic, or is it just the phase where the kids like to speak their own "language" - my healthy daughter went through that too...don't know, only time will tell!!)

 

Here's the issue, my son seems to be exhibiting new fears. When my daughter was this age, she would often call us into her bedroom at night or naptime and say she was scared. When we'd ask her of what, she would look around the room and try to make something up, since she obviously wasn't scared and just wanted Mommy and Daddy's attention to try to stay up later. She never even acted really scared either - it was all about the attention.

 

My son has started doing something similar, but it's not at any predictable time, it's far more random. (at home, school, in the car, outside playing) He also seems to really show fear, he has a physical reaction that is noticable (which my daughter never had). When we ask him what's wrong, why he's scard, he can't figure it out, so he'll repeat that he's scared a few more times, and then once we've calmed him a bit, he'll look around and make up something random that scared him (the tree, the light bulb). This has been going on off and on for a couple of months now, and I'm beginning to question if it might be OCD, and not the attention getter it was for my daughter.

 

Could it be he's really having fears, but just can't figure out what's he's afraid of, or can't verbalize it so after he's calmed he just makes something up? I'm trying to figure it out. He's not had any major meltdowns as a result of this yet, but there have been tears and crying - but we're usually able to comfort him with hugs and such.

 

Any thoughts?

[tantrums]

That IS a hard one. I was just talking to a friend who has a 3 year old. He suddenly has to sleep with the light on and is creeping into their bed in the middle of the night. 3 is the age my healthy at the time child started developing real fears and doing similiar things. At 3, they start to figure out the world and that there are things that can actually hurt them and those they love. Throw pandas in at the same time and I can't imagine trying to figure out which is which

[smartyjones]

Could it be he's really having fears, but just can't figure out what's he's afraid of, or can't verbalize it so after he's calmed he just makes something up? I'm trying to figure it out.

 

 

i do try to be careful to attribute comments to other people -- however, this was such a good comment -- this is MY INTREPRETATION of what dr. L said at the OCD conference. . .'the thoughts and fears of these kids are such that they will never tell you what they are.' that statement did make an impression on me.

 

i do agree that age 3 is a tough one to figure out what you're trying to. . . just my opinion, but i would err on the side of caution and think that he is really having fears.

 

my son tends to have 'just right' OCD or sensory issues --- we've gotten to the point that i can ask him 'is there a reason?' he can usually state "there is no reason, it just is" -- sensory or just right; "there's a reason but i don't want to tell you" -- likely some fear or anxiety basis he can't or doesn't want to verbalize; or "there's a reason that no one can ever, ever know" -- during a herx-like reaction to an antiviral resulting in classic, textbook contamination OCD with eating/drinking refusal.

 

could you try to work some system to gauge what's going on to develop strategies without having to have him actually tell you the fear?

[airial95]

He has a lot of "just right" anxiety and OCD. We've been able to get through that by him simply saying "it's broken". When he says that, we realize that there's probably nothing actually "wrong" with anything, it's just "broken" in his mind and we go on from there.

 

The fears are new for us. The first time he had a major fear reaction, it was one day on our way to school, as we were leaving the house he freaked out, clinging to me, crying, shaking. The whole way to school I had to hold his hand in the back while I was driving (not easy to do!) He was like this all the way into day care, and as I was trying to calm him, I got him to tell me that he was "scared of the rain" (it was a 90 degree sunny beautiful Florida day). His reaction was so severe, I swept him up out of there and headed right into the ped's office for a throat culture - sure enough, it was positive. He woke with a fever the next day.

 

He hasn't had a fear reaction like that since, until these recently. These aren't as severe as that first one, but it's definately more of a physical reaction than my daughter. I'm beginning to lean towards symptomatic - so we might need to come up with a system like "broken" that let's him know when he's scared, he doesn't have to know why.

 

And smarty - our therapist and Dr's have told us the same thing about OCD - often the person themselves have NO IDEA why they're afraid, or why they have these compulsions, so I think your interpretation is pretty accurate!!

 

Thanks all!!

[Stephanie2]

In my experience with my little ones, fears are a BIG sign of strep/inflammation. We don't get the fears with yeast or other bacteria, only strep. It took me a very long time to put this all togehter. My older boy tells me what he is afraid of, my younger one just looks around his room like he is paranoid and can't quite figure out what it is (he will point to different things in his room).

 

If I had to guess, whatever abx he is taking is just not doing it. I had to switch to OLE to get rid of the fears. I'm guessing that the strep had some resistence to the azith and augmentin we were using (high doses). The fears went away after 3 days of OLE (also high dose) and they come back when I lower the dose.

 

I think your son is just not controlled yet (in terms of pandas). Have you thought about moving on to a pandas specialist/IVIG or a steroid taper?

My son is only 3, so we always have the fun experience of trying to figure out what might be symptomatic vs just normal 3 year old behavior. Most often, we have to wait for symptoms to be present for several days/weeks before we can even figure it out. (For example, we started making weird "noises" - like fake one syllable words - always the same. Is this a new tic, or is it just the phase where the kids like to speak their own "language" - my healthy daughter went through that too...don't know, only time will tell!!)

 

Here's the issue, my son seems to be exhibiting new fears. When my daughter was this age, she would often call us into her bedroom at night or naptime and say she was scared. When we'd ask her of what, she would look around the room and try to make something up, since she obviously wasn't scared and just wanted Mommy and Daddy's attention to try to stay up later. She never even acted really scared either - it was all about the attention.

 

My son has started doing something similar, but it's not at any predictable time, it's far more random. (at home, school, in the car, outside playing) He also seems to really show fear, he has a physical reaction that is noticable (which my daughter never had). When we ask him what's wrong, why he's scard, he can't figure it out, so he'll repeat that he's scared a few more times, and then once we've calmed him a bit, he'll look around and make up something random that scared him (the tree, the light bulb). This has been going on off and on for a couple of months now, and I'm beginning to question if it might be OCD, and not the attention getter it was for my daughter.

 

Could it be he's really having fears, but just can't figure out what's he's afraid of, or can't verbalize it so after he's calmed he just makes something up? I'm trying to figure it out. He's not had any major meltdowns as a result of this yet, but there have been tears and crying - but we're usually able to comfort him with hugs and such.

 

Any thoughts?

[MichaelTampa]

Yes, even as an adult, when I was doing quite terribly before I started getting abx treatment, I would have fears that I had no idea what it was "from".

[airial95]

In my experience with my little ones, fears are a BIG sign of strep/inflammation. We don't get the fears with yeast or other bacteria, only strep. It took me a very long time to put this all togehter. My older boy tells me what he is afraid of, my younger one just looks around his room like he is paranoid and can't quite figure out what it is (he will point to different things in his room).

 

If I had to guess, whatever abx he is taking is just not doing it. I had to switch to OLE to get rid of the fears. I'm guessing that the strep had some resistence to the azith and augmentin we were using (high doses). The fears went away after 3 days of OLE (also high dose) and they come back when I lower the dose.

 

I think your son is just not controlled yet (in terms of pandas). Have you thought about moving on to a pandas specialist/IVIG or a steroid taper?

 

Stephanie,

 

We're already seeing Dr. Murphy, and at our appointment last week was the first time that IVIG was brought up for my little guy. I also asked them about a steriod taper, she's not so sure about that, she doesn't use them in treatments. We're going for some more in depth immuno testing than what we've gotten so far and then we follow up next week.

 

Our biggest issue with Broderick is that he's so darn sensitive to exposure, so we've kind of plateaued as to how far we've gotten. We're stuck where we are now (at about 85%) because he reacts to exposure to every little thing, even though he doesn't actually get the strep. It's infuriating!!