9yr old with ocd/anxiety? Help please!!

[AutumnIsFab]

I'll try and be brief but thorough... Thought I'd ask you lovely lot before I google....

Our eldest DC is 9 nearly 10. Due to start a new school in september. We moved house and schools a few months ago.

Issues I'm concerned about;

Hand washing-he's been doing this for a couple of months. He washes them for ages-convinced they're sticky. I was woken up this morning to him in the bathroom washing his hands so much so the water tank was making noise like we'd ran a bath! And he was counting (which is new)

Noticed him counting washing his hands this afternoon too. He lets them dry naturally rather than using a towel.

Socks- the seam bear the toes drives him mad. Again this has only been a few months. He changes his socks if they're not right and gets really frustrated. I've tried cutting as much of the end thread off as possible but it still bothers him. He now hides dirty socks that are comfy rather than letting me wash them.

His pillow has to be just so. Not turned round or over. If I change the sheets he's convinced iced swapped his pillow.

Seams on his pjs shoulder he's 'aware' of and will put in on and turn it around a few times whilst looking in the mirror to see ignite the right way.

So my questions are:

How don't deal with it?

Do I ignore and hope it will pass? Discuss it with him? Do I make it an issue we need to resolve?

I really don't know the bet thing to do so any help/ advice/experience would be great please.

Sounds like he has some sensory issues which are causing the anxiety? Is he sensitive in other ways?

I am a OCD and anxiety suffer from the age of 6years old. My mum never picked up on it as I hid it until 2 years ago I am now 30years old. I would talk to him I wish my mum noticed (she's still a amazing mum). I just hid it really well. There's a book that you can buy from Amazon it's called Can I tell you about OCD. They also have a anxiety one Can I tell you about anxiety. It's very informative and short read

Hi there.
We have been here with our DS at this age. Similar kind of things especially around bed time with routines about checking, sensory issues.
I worried about it for a long time without commenting on any of it to him directly. Then I decided one day to just talk very calmly to him about my concerns without any angst on my part. I think bringing it out into the open helped eased his anxiety about it. Not making too big a deal of it whilst drawing it to his attention that I was concerned seemed to be a hard balance but an important one.

I think that there are a lot on anxieties at this age as they are learning more about the adult world. I think you have to put a lot of time in to build their sense of self worth and open opportunities to talk - reading together, playing together etc.

My DS is 12 now and it has all largely passed. I debated with DH as to whether we would go to the GP but in the end we decided not to and I am glad that we didn't as I think it would have heightened his anxiety about the anxiety.

It is not going to go over night and it will come out in various ways - my best advice is to have a few conversations directly and calmly and then ignore it the rest of the time BUT you must spend time doing fun stuff together to build them up.
Good luck

Thanks everyone.

We have another DC with some sensory issues and our eldest DC has never come up radar as it were before a few months ago.

He's completely normal in every way other than I feel he's using these things as something he can control?

Bump

There is a good book by Dawn Huebner called What to do when Your Brain Gets Stuck which you can work through together.

I started manifesting OCD around age 11/12. No one did anything for about 7 years. I really wish they had! I still have it (mid 30s now). I often wonder whether, if it had been 'caught' earlier, I might have benefitted more from learning coping mechanisms earlier on and my behaviours might not have become so ingrained.

I would have been mortified at the time, though, if someone had raised the issue. But with hindsight I think it would have been a good thing.

P.S. it is about control....OCD is an anxiety disorder and these things might give him illusion of control

P.P.S. I went through the hand-washing stage in my teens. I haven't had it since. So whilst the OCD is still there, the way it manifests itself has (in my case at any rate) evolved and changed quite a lot over time