Jump to content
ACN Latitudes Forums

"What to do when your brain gets stuck"


eljomom

Recommended Posts

I finally got a copy of "What to do when your brain gets stuck." A few people on here have mentioned it. It is a great book--love how it explains OCD. My daughter just turned 7---she's a "young" 7. I'm thinking it might be a bit over her head. ARe there any people who have used it for little ones? Any other books like that which might be better for youngers? I thought I heard something about "Up and down a worry tree" or something along those lines at one point, but again, not sure what ages, and if it deals with ocd.

 

A couple concerns too---I fear a bit that there are so many concrete examples that they might plant seeds (or more worries) in her head??? Like give her more ideas and ways to obsess and compulse.

 

Also, her main issues are with germs and food. So the ERP, would the child have to force themself to eat? I'm a little confused with this one. She also has the clothing issues, have to stretch all armpits of shirts, etc. How do kids "get used to" clothes bothering them?

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I'm not an ERP expert, but from what I've gathered on here- you take things in very small steps. So, if she has food issues- you might start with just exposure to food pictures- gradually increasing exposure time- then move on to just looking at real food- then maybe touching- one small taste.... like that, but tailored to your child and incorporating feed back from them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I finally got a copy of "What to do when your brain gets stuck." A few people on here have mentioned it. It is a great book--love how it explains OCD. My daughter just turned 7---she's a "young" 7. I'm thinking it might be a bit over her head. ARe there any people who have used it for little ones? Any other books like that which might be better for youngers? I thought I heard something about "Up and down a worry tree" or something along those lines at one point, but again, not sure what ages, and if it deals with ocd.

 

A couple concerns too---I fear a bit that there are so many concrete examples that they might plant seeds (or more worries) in her head??? Like give her more ideas and ways to obsess and compulse.

 

Also, her main issues are with germs and food. So the ERP, would the child have to force themself to eat? I'm a little confused with this one. She also has the clothing issues, have to stretch all armpits of shirts, etc. How do kids "get used to" clothes bothering them?

Thanks!

 

 

Yes I had both books. The other is "up and down the worry hill" which may be a little more appropriate. The author actually has a good book for you called "what to do if your child has obsessive compulsive disorder" This is the book that lead me to the PANDAS diagnosis, although it is a brief paragraph in the book, the thought that my daughters behaviours could be infection related needed to be ruled out- then elevated titers and response to antibiotics- Thank God I found that book. My dd is 8, she wont' have anything to do with the books. I think ERP is EXACTLY what she needs, but after several months with the therapist, she didn't even mention starting it. My dd has rage issues that come with the OCD, I found the therapists don't like to work ERP with that, so I am going it alone. My dd wont' open up with a therapist anyway. I am thinking about using the worry hill book again when we get to the point of trying to refrain from her compulsion. Right now, our first step is just to TALK about it. My problems with the books were also that my dd has very different OCD. She has compulsions she needs to do to relieve anxiety from hearing certain words (back, chin, jaw, yawn) She has no contamination fears at all, so like you, I am afraid she may pick them up if she reads about them. I also think it is hard for her to relate to that because they are such different fears than hers. Not even sure if hers are even fears, rather just triggers for whatever reason. I also purchased a CD program that may be helpful, I think this is the best thing I gotten so far, my dd actually gave it more of a chance than ANYTHING else because it is kind of fun, she did stop listening but I think we will work towards it again because I do think it can be very helpful. It is called the TURNAROUND Program- turning fears into freedom. You can order it online and there is a moneyback offer if it doesn't work. I thought it was worth keeping. Hope this helps

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used what to do when your brain gets stuck with my, them 6 and 9 yr olds. They both loved it, and it helped a lot.

 

I was initially concerned about the power of suggestion, but the funny thing is, even though they were in the midst of debilitating OCD, issues they didn't have seemed like unusual or silly things to worry about.

 

The nice thing about doing it with a non reader, is you can interject something they do here and there.

 

The book really asks the kids to be a detective to look for theiir OCD- which can be a fun challenge. It is empowering for them to name a behaviour OCD.

 

The tools really helped my kids start to take some control and work on things.

 

I was. Very surprised of how aware both kids were of their issues, and how much they wanted help under the anger. One of the keys is to go really slow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

She also has the clothing issues, have to stretch all armpits of shirts, etc. How do kids "get used to" clothes bothering them?

 

I can give a suggetion for this....we worked on CBT with a great dr at Duke this year for 6 months and came a long way with the clothing issues. Underwear hurt, socks hurt, shirts and pants have to start and stop at a certain place on her arms and legs, and what helped the most was making a thermometer from 0 up to 10 at 10 being the red zone, or the worst. When she got upset about her clothing, we would calm her down by telling her we understood, and asking where her thermometer was.....it was usually a 10. Then we would help her make a chart for where the thermometer was at 2 mins later, then 10 mins later, then 20 mins later....and usually we would all watch this "thermometer" come down to a 3 or 4. She would then start to forget or get used to the clothing and keep it on for longer periods of time. Baby steps here......first we worked on underwear.....then moved to something else when underwear got better, etc...

 

It took a few times for her to understand that we wanted her to keep the item on for a few mins, and then discuss how she felt, but we still use this tool today......and boy have we come a long way! Hope it helps. We also have What to do when your brain gets stuck, and she loves it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was initially concerned about the power of suggestion, but the funny thing is, even though they were in the midst of debilitating OCD, issues they didn't have seemed like unusual or silly things to worry about.

Same here. If my son wasn't having an issue with hand washing, a discussion about kids needing to wash obsessively struck him as silly, even tho the need to tap things four times made perfect sense to him at the time.

 

My son at age 6 and 7 loved "Brain Stuck". My daughter, almost 6, finds it harder to follow. So we've done a lot of "editorializing" to make it more applicable to her issues. I also recommend "Tiger Tiger, Is It True?" for the younger crowd. It's not about OCD specifically. It deals with being the boss of your own thoughts and using "fact checking" to banish sad thoughts that aren't really true. Requires more work for the adult to bring the concepts home, but it only presented one concept instead of the entire ERP strategy and was better for her age group.

 

As the others have said, ERP is about exposure. You want to build up, doing small steps to build confidence. If you go too fast, the fear can be overwhelming and backfire. For clothing, my daughter had huge issues with socks and underwear. We worked on wearing the offending article of clothing for just 2 minutes, using a timer. Then we worked up to 10 min, or if that was too much, maybe we did 2 min sessions, but twice a day or three times a day, etc. The important thing was to empathize with her. If she felt misunderstood, it made her feel even worse and less willing to do the hard work. So imagine you have a sharp, scratchy tag on the back of your shirt the whole time you're trying to help your daughter. Say things like "it must be awful having the clothing fairy/OCD monster/worry guy telling you to be uncomfortable. How awful to have someone else making you miserable. Let's be a team and squash that monster so you can be happy again."

 

It's important to put yourself on your daughter's team. She needs allies and coaches, not another person reminding her how silly her thoughts are. When my daughter succeeded in wearing underwear for 2 minutes, we made a big deal out of it and she got a "prize." It could be something from the prize box (trinkets from the dollar store) or a coupon (playing polly pockets with mom for 30 minutes) or points. Initially, you want an instant reward. But later, you can give points and let them save up their points to "buy" something. We had a menu of rewards - earn 10 points to watch mom do a funky dance in public, 50 points to go ice skating with the family (and it might take 1-2 weeks to earn this many points). Some kids need the instant gratification, others can be motivated with long term goals. But if you do a long term goal, keep a visual graph to let them see themselves making progress. We also made a big deal of squashing the fairy every time she was defeated - jumping on an invisible fairy, mashing our hands together, etc. You really want to harp on how great it feels, how strong they are, whenever they're able to say "no" to OCD even briefly. Have her keep a list of every time she was successful and put it on the fridge, so she can see success even on days when she feels like a failure.

 

Whatever you call it, it helps the kids to talk about OCD and give it a name. They can be so confused by what's happening to them. Having an adult name it and explain it takes some of the fear away and helps them feel understood.

 

At the same time, educate yourself by reading an OCD book for parents. Talking Back to OCD is a good one as well as Freeing Your Child From OCD. OCD isn't one person's problem. It becomes a problem for the whole family. So the more you understand, the more the whole family is on board and uses the same vocabulary, the better.

 

The food issues are obviously more serious and I'm hoping someone else chimes in with suggestions there. What are your daughter's specific eating fears?

Edited by LLM
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's important to put yourself on your daughter's team. She needs allies and coaches, not another person reminding her how silly her thoughts are.

 

When my daughter succeeded in wearing underwear for 2 minutes, we made a big deal out of it and she got a "prize."Whatever you call it, it helps the kids to talk about OCD and give it a name. They can be so confused by what's happening to them. Having an adult name it and explain it takes some of the fear away and helps them feel understood.

 

 

LLM -- such a good, good point about being on your child's team. unfortunately, this is not something we always suceeded at but looking back, i can clearly see how our reactions/interactions helped him dig his heels in or helped loosen them. also, when things went south at school, i think this was a main contributing factor. teacher got increasing frustrated with him but i believe this is mainly why it spiraled -- she set up an opposing camp and wanted him to comply. what she got was a wall of non-interaction.

 

anxietybc.com has some good worksheets -- thermometers like have been mentioned. we did not use them in the traditional way b/c ds was not cooperative. we used it as "steps" and i determined each baby step. i have been told it's more effective if the child is participating in determining the steps. i do believe this but - if you can't get that participation, you're dead in the water and need to start somewhere. he did not want to talk about/hear etc OCD, thoughts, etc. - it was not reassuring to him but the opposite. but he could work on one small baby step if i said it was the 'step of the day'.

 

he loved Brave Ben about a boy who's afraid of everything and goes to seek help and courage from magic tree. we wrote a fabulous version about him going to school when that was a big problem. he made sure all was about another kid - not him. we got pictures from the web and he made them all cartoons -- none could be real life -- i think that seemed too real.

 

also - ds had to work up to rewards. for him, attention placed on things - even good things - is a scary trigger to just retreat. sometimes, a quiet congratulations and high five is plenty, move on and don't discuss too much. i know this is rather different than most kids and something professionals (not so skilled OCD or ERP - we've had trouble finding help in the professional arena) have not really believed me about - but - i wanted to throw it out there in case others were not finding success with reward systems. we have used reward systems and he's been excited about it but - for him, it's an added bonus, not at all a motivating tool.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A couple of great books for the younger set are "Mr Worry" and "Wemberly Worried". Mr Worry was a big hit at our house and for several years my son would request to read it when he felt his OCD/anxiety ramping up. Unfortunately, he ripped it up in a symbolic gesture during a rage attack at age 12, so we no longer have it...

 

Can I ask what her food issues are? Are they related to contamination fears? ERP is set up in small incremental steps and tailored to what the fear is. For us, my son thought all food that was refrigerated was contaminated and stopped eating. So our ERP was directed at the refrigerator fear, not the food itself. Once he overcame the fear of the refrigerator (and trust me this was very hard work) the food followed along. Maybe someone could make a specific suggestion to try if you can provide more details?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As for germs and food, you don't have to go full force into having her overcome her issues. Do baby steps and break it down. Can you give some examples of what she does?

 

As for germs and my son, one time it was as little as me holding his hand and having one single finger touch a toy. That was a big deal. Later we graduated to two fingers then the whole hand.

 

As for food, again, some examples may help. Food can be a big array of things varying from food restriction to sensory.

 

Pixiesmommy once mentioned a brushing technique for sensory issues. I've never tried it, but sounds interesting. Sensory was something we had to wait for my son to overcome on his own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gosh, I am just now seeing all of these wonderfully helpful replies! I guess I forgot to click "watch topic" so never got any e-mail notifications:( So thank you all for your input.

My daughter is more on the "not want to talk about it" realm. Even if she gets hurt, or really upset, she retreats away from anyone who wants to console her. With the eating, I've just noticed that over the past couple weeks, she will not eat meat, even mac n cheese (a favorite), just will eat things like mandarin oranges from a can, or christmas cookies. And no water. Period. Says it's gross. Only wants milk, and I"m still not sure milk is not part of her issue with tics (I know, longshot....). She will be starving, and then when I give her something, she won't eat it. I ask her why, and she says "i don't know." or "i just don't want it." I ask why, but get nowhere. She also, whenever I pick her up, looks away and says "your breath..." even if I've just brushed my teeth. Part of me wants to just give in and let her live on chocolate milk, but i just don't know.

To top it all off, my husband STILL thinks all this is "just a phase" and she'll eat when she's good and hungry. I notice she's more tired---probably from not eating.

Thanks again for sharing---I will look up those books.

Wendy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Forgot to add, I refused to say "okay" for her to swallow her liquid vitamin (I should explain this ritual: she takes a little sublingual B6, Zn, Mg and you're supposed to hold it under your tongue for 10 seconds. So she would put it under her tongue, and count hmmm, hmmm, hmmm to ten, then look at me and mumble hmmm????, and I'd say "okay" that she could swallow it. It didnt' dawn on me till last week that it was a ritual, until I told her she could swallow it without asking me, and she said "no I can't...you have to tell me its okay." The next day, I when she did her thing, I said "you know you can swallow that without me telling you" and she got wide-eyed and wouldn't swallow....kept looking at me and motioning for me to say it, but I didn't. She finally swallowed it, but said "next time I'm not going to swallow it until you say okay." So next day, same thing....looked at me "i said, i'm not going to say it, and looked the other way". She Swallowed it!!! I said" see you can do it"---and she said "no i can't." next day, same thing, but didn't even ask me. I gave her high five, but she wasn't really into celebrating. Again, she's not about talking about it.

 

Also, we had another tooth freak out today. Last one was a couple weeks ago, front tooth dangling for days on end, driving her crazy. Finally, I said it's got to come out, and we had an entire day of crying freaking out fits, her shaking ,etc. super scared. Repeat today. I nipped it in the bud though. She came to me in tears saying the tooth was really bugging her. I was tender and validated her, but after about 15 minutes of her crying, etc. and me telling her to try to play and she'll forget about it.....I said "hard way or easy way?" She knows that drill from other things in the past, like dental appt.s, fillings, etc. Easy way is you cooperate, hard way is you don't cooperate, but it still happens. Pulled that sucker out. She cried, I tried to console her, but again, not receptive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We haven't gotten any of these books for my son yet - he's only 3, and I've looked at them, but think eventhough he's exceptionally bright, it might not connect. Instead, we've used social stories, we used power point to write a series of "Broderick Books" that deal specifically with his rituals. Instead of dwelling on what he shouldn't be doing, or what's wrong with his compulsions - we write the story to reflect what he SHOULD be doing. (We had a great one for breakfast/drop off at day care which was our biggest/most elaborate ritual of the day). He loved reading about himself (we used actual pictures of him doing the things in the story) and even took the books to school to have his teacher read to his class at story time. As we worked on the rituals step by step (baby steps as everyone already mentioned) we could recall his attention to the "Broderick Book".

 

It really worked well for us thus far since he's so young. He's already taken to calling his thoughts "bad guys" sometimes, but it's not been consistent enough for us to adopt the concept and run with it yet. But since he's so young, we don't really "talk about it" either, so I can relate.

 

As for the praise, our son is hit or miss. If he does something well from the get go we can shower with praise and he loves it. However, if he's struggled, he doesn't like the attention.

 

For example, our therapist is now working on his fixation with certain numbers (started with 5, but as we started the ERP he switched to 3, so we're working on that). If we didn't give him 5/3 of something he would go off the deep end (chicken nuggets, crayons, whatever). So we've been focusing on never letting him have anything in groups of 5/3 - if it comes in a package that way, we have to break it up. We were told that when he throws his fits, the first sign of him starting to calm, even a split second break with the crying we were supposed to praise to the moon. Every time we tried that, it made the tantrum worse, and last longer. Finally, we started to just let him ride out the fit - but without giving in to the OCD (he had to live with 4 nuggets, no matter how hard he cried). At times it takes him a while (the other day it was 45 minutes, but eventually he started to eat). Once he calms and starts eating/playing with whatever the offending object is, we just step in, give him a hug and a kiss, tell him we love him, and leave it at that. No big deal.

 

It's almost like he has to be praised on his terms. When he does something really good he's very proud and likes the party, but if it's a struggle, its almost like he's upset with himself so we have to keep it low key for him, but let him know subtly how proud we are of him.

 

So smarty makes a good point - you have to figure out what type of reward/praise your child will respond too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...