Is this giving in to OCD and should I stop it?

[parents4eyes]

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Edited September 8, 2010 by parents4eyes

[MomWithOCDSon]

Is this giving in to OCD and should I stop it?

Everything my daughter does is so exhausting and takes a long time, so she asks me to do things for her like turning off the night light, get her a cup of water, brush her retainer, choose her cloths to wear, etc. I do not do things the OCD way, but should I refuse to do it for her at all even though she complains that it is exhausting? I feel like a personal butler. I also stand next to her the entire process urging her on. She doesn't repeat things too much, but everything she does is a long drawn out process, and many times she is stuck standing there unable to do it at all. She was just diagnosed with PANDAS six days ago. We hadn’t started CBT and the doctor recommended that we wait a couple weeks to see how the meds work. Our finances agree. I am working with the When Your Brain Get Stuck book for kids. But otherwise I am a bit in the dark on what to do.

 

May

Oh boy, been there, done that!

 

I would say that, to the extent that you are helping move her along in a way that is best for YOU and, as you said, NOT "doing it the OCD way," you're not enabling the OCD itself; you're just cutting down on the frustration and drag on getting your daughter through a set of tasks and out the door. It's when they start demanding that you brush the retainer a certain way, or brush it again because the first time wasn't good enough, or that when you take the clothes out of the drawer they have to be put on the bed, rather than on the chair, etc. that the OCD can get "fed" and encouraged.

 

As for the speed at which she can move forward with tasks and needing constant encouragement and reminders . . . these should improve as the meds start to take hold; they certainly did with our DS. But, in the meantime, you might try using a timer; the two of you can sit down and decide how long she needs to brush her teeth, get her pj's on, etc. and she can set the timer for each task (you may have to negotiate with her some and perhaps agree to some longer timing initially, with a vow to start trimming it down as she improves). When the timer rings, it's an automatic reminder for her to move on to the next task and set it again, and on and on. It creates what we call in our house "a perpetual motion machine" out of a kid who would otherwise stall out and forget what comes next or how much time has gone by without him accomplishing anything. Also, if the timer ring is loud enough, it'll free you up to do other things besides hover next to her, but it'll remind you, too, to check up on her and see how things are going when you hear the ring.

[kcdc3]

OCD is extremely exhausting for both the child and the parent. I think that you have to pick and choose which battles you want to fight right now. I definitely would not fight them all at once. Maybe pick one to start with that you refuse to do for her. We tried CBT with some ERP when our dd was really bad off with the OCD and it didn't work for us, although I've heard that it works wonderfully for others....but she wasn't taking any antibiotics at the time, only an SSRI which made her much, much worse. When we found the right antibiotic for her, she got 95% better with only minor residual OCD left. However, we went off the meds for a little over a week and it all came back. Guess we went off way too soon. Her doctor is calling in another 30 day supply for us. I'm hoping we can gain back the ground that we lost this past week. So in your case, waiting to see if the meds will work is a reasonable option, I would think, however, finding the right one might be a longer process than you are willing to give to the OCD. It's almost like you are stuck between a rock and a hard place in that - if your daughter is anything like mine- you can try to work on the OCD, but it will fall on deaf ears until the brain recovers from whatever is bothering it(strep, Mycoplasma, Lyme, etc) enough to be able to process what you are saying. So, I think just from my experience, it's a waste of money to pay someone to do CBT if she is not physically able to process it. However, you can work on it with her a little at a time yourself. Some things our therapist had her do were: rank her fears in order from most fearful to least fearful. Then she worked on the least fearful one first. She learned various relaxation techniques to help her when she felt the anxiety coming on. She sometimes worked on a fearful thing for a month or more. She did get rid of a few things, but the harder things only came once we found the right antibiotic for her.

[Joan Pandas Mom]

We went to LA (from New Hampshire) to a great, great OCD specialist in late November, early December. My son was so sick and had been out of school since mid October at that point. After 12 days we came home. He was just too sick with PANDAS to fight. Anther PANDAS mom told me trying ERP at that point when he was so sick was like criticizing someones penmanship when they can't even hold a pen. He still isn't ready to do the ERP yet but is doing much better and probably will start soon. We had to give the antibiotics more time (he had been on them 7 weeks at that point). He had a T&A in mid Dec. too that helped a lot.

[smartyjones]

Is this giving in to OCD and should I stop it?

May

 

hi may. i'm sorry - i'm not one to be able to answer if you should stop or what you should do.

 

i know when my son was at his worst, and can be if in exacerbation, he is very unwilling to do things he is completely capable of. what seemed to work for us was if i split the duties with him. "you put on your underwear and i'll help you with your pants" - "are you going to be the taker-offer or the putter-oner". "you put on your pants and i'll help with your shirt". those are all getting dressed, which was a big issue but we'd do it for other things, too. "I'll stand 5 steps from the bathroom while you're in there". when he'd want me to be in the bathroom with him.

 

he usually responded fairly well and it made me feel better that i wasn't, as you say totally "his butler".

 

good luck.