OCD

[MomWithOCDSon]

As I was responding to another post regarding one of those "is this OCD?" moments, I started thinking about all the forms of OCD behaviors we've seen in our DS since he was first diagnosed at the age of 6. He's now just a week away from 16, and though we had a full 4 years without any noticable behaviors, and they've significantly decreased again since we found PANDAS, it's quite a cavalcade of behaviors and eccentricities we've seen over the years. So I thought I'd make a note of them here and invite others to chime in as well.

 

• Contamination, generally
  
• Perfectionism, generally
  
• Showering a certain way, in a certain order
  
• Using the bathroom at every transition of activity
  
• Lying in bed, listing "confessions" before he could settle down to sleep for the night
  
• Pacing in a circle before walking out the front door for school, dentist, etc.
  
• Scrutinizing silverware and place-setting before beginning to eat a meal
  
• Rebooting/restarting his computer, over and over again, until it "booted right"
  
• Showering immediately after getting home from school
  
• Changing clothes 2 or 3 times each day
  
• Saying everything that comes into his head, the minute it pops in there, afraid that if he tries to "hold onto it" and wait until the right time, because he'll forget it if he doesn't
  
• Being the penultimate "backseat driver," watching his dad's and my speed, cornering, stopping, passing like a hawk to make sure we're driving safely
  
• Erasing his homework repeatedly, afraid the writing wasn't well done or correct
  
• Reading and re-reading line after line in a book, trying to make sure he understood every word
  
• Rewinding television shows and/or movies, over and over again, to make sure he didn't miss anything or fail to understand it
  
• Fearing all things sexual and/or sensual, including all references on TV, in books, etc.
  
• Being rabidly anti-alcohol, to the extent that he once wanted to call the police rather than get in the car with his dad and me when we'd each had one glass of wine with dinner at a restaurant
  

 

I'm sure others will come to mind over time. I'm just glad to say, now, that most of this is in our rear-view mirror!