obsessive hand washing 6 yr old, do I go to GP?

[toadstool]

...or will it make things worse?
DD1 has ample reasons to be anxious (new baby sister, new house, new town, change of school and friends, all in the past year), and she has developed an OCD-like hand-washing habit. Sadly it's getting worse, and she now spends a good 5 minutes washing, and washes several times a day. Her hands have severe dry skin and occasional bleeding. She;s very upset if we try to stop her or tell her off, and yesterday, she "held on" probably all day, then wet the bed late at night, because she said we were trying to stop her going to the toilet.
Online, a couple of sites say we should ignore it in the hope it goes away, but it is beginning to interfere with her normal life (and it's very irritating - a day trip at the week-end turned into a washroom-crawl).
Any advice?

No advice sorry, but bumping for you.

Do you have access to a school nurse? Maybe she will be able to advise, and possibly have a word to a doctor to find out how to progress. I had some really good advice from my sons' school nurse about night toilet training, I'm sure your school nurse will be as helpful.

Thanks, Kittensocks, I'll see if there's a nurse available (she's probably shared with other schools). DH wants to go to a child psych or the GP, but I'm wary of escalating the anxiety.

Why don't you go to your gp without your dd in the first instance? See what he/she advises?

It does sound very like OCD-ish behaviour. You don't say how long it has been going on - it could be a passing phase or it could be setting in. I would make an appt with your GP and ask them for an urgent referral to your community mental health professional, or perhaps to a specialist children's service. There is likely to be high demand (there is in most areas).

While you're waiting, you could contact one of the various OC organisations for help or the National Phobics Society.

I wouldn't tell her off about it. You can start communicating with her by acknowledging that she needs to do it and ask her if it is making her feel better to do it. Trying to get her to recognise her feelings before, during and after the washing would be a starting point. Gently asking her what it is she is afraid of that she needs to get off her hands might also help you talk about it.

There are lots of 'standard' cognitive behavioural therapy techniques you can read up on which often help this kind of thing, but you will need some advice from community mental health nurse or specialist. Essentially CBT works by encouraging people to learn to challenge the thoughts that make them anxious (the cognitive bit) and to test out and challenge the behaviour (eg handwashing) that 'seems' to them to make them less anxious. It is a progressive therapy, and works by incremental change that is recorded - so keeping a diary of even tiny improvements is helpful. But you do need to know what to record... Googling or Amazoning CBT for kids might turn up something helpful but the techniques are probably similar to those with adults. CBT has a good success rate in teaching people with anxiety disorders (of which OCD is one) to manage their fears and behaviours. It doesn't always cure, but it can head it off when things get really tough.

she might also benefit from some other less cognitive therapy if she's an anxious kid but your GP should be able to advise if they're good.

Good luck!

Toadstool don't hang on. My son is 13 and has ocd his is hand washing also. We have had a stressful time of late too so I thought it would go away! At Christmas it was really bad so I took him to the gp hoping it would embarrass him into stopping, but it never. His hands are terribly dry and cracked so we hoped when he went back to school he would stop if others commented, but he never so he was referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health team. I thought it would only be acouple of weeks but we have now got an appointment for Friday and only after I kicked up a fuss. He was better in the holidays but this morning it was back to school and I noticed half of the soap has gone so back to stage one. Hope this helps and try to stay calm - easier said than done i know.

Thank you, Monkeybird. It's been going on for nearly 5 months but it's getting worse, e.g. she's now putting soap on twice, lengthening the process, focusing on her wrists (and soaking several tops a day in the process!). The week-end was particularly bad, I think because of school on Monday.

OK, thank you mumoftwo, I'll get onto the GP this week.

toadstool - am going to link you to an interesting thread - hope it isn't too alarming though - but I do think to be aware of everything is more helpful than not kn owing,iyswim...what monkeybird suggested is sensible and sound advice .. really hope you can find some help for your dd - if it is OCD then she certainly can be helped and there is light at the end of the tunnel - promise !

here

MY ds also get very anxious about stuff and has had periods of frequent hand washing. We've discovered that what helps is to reduce the stress around him: being the biggest, calmest, most loving and consistent parents we can possibly be. And being stressed out, short-fused, busy parents doesn't (speaking from experience). Also getting upset about handwashing - which is just the symptom - really didn't help. Do try to ignore it. Instead we tried to make our ds feel as safe and secure as we could. The more stressed we are, the more he is. When it does get too much try resorting to humour - laughing works much better than a sense of humour failure. Good luck. BTW my ds is now biting his nails. Any ideas???

Thanks to all posters, and Rez and Mumoftwo, I'm sorry you are going through this so much more extensively. I will contact the GP as there is such a lot of anxiety in her. This other thread was useful - I'm interested by the posters who say that it was partly about keeping other relatives safe, that makes sense. On the other hand, most of the posters were talking about an older age-group (8-11 or teen); I'm not sure a 6 year old could be quite so good at dealing with CB work - but it's worth exploring.
I'm not sure we can chill out as much as she needs us to, but certainly we can try to avoid getting on her case. As it is, I chatted to her last night after the bed-wetting incident and she spoke about being scared at school that the toilet might be overheard in the classroom (new one on me!). Tonight she said she felt OK about it today and she was sure that no-one could heard her, so I'm glad I got her talking. Tonight, I asked her as she was washing what she was removing and she said she was removing "yuck." So, I asked her if it felt good to remove the "yuck" and she said yes. Well, it's a start...

Hi OP, I was wondering what happened and if your daughter grew out of it or if you needed to get her help, and if so, what kind?
my 6 year old son is washing his hands a lot, to the point he’s making them so dry and raw. He can wash his hands, get back in bed, then touch something and say he needs to wash them again. I’m getting very concerned about it now. I realise this is a very old post but I just wondered if you were able to share what happened. Thank you.

enjoyeverymoment, I know you are wanting a reply from the OP, but in case it’s helpful, I have found the “what to do when” series of books really helpful and there is one specifically for OCD - “what to do when your brain gets stuck”. The books are designed for you to read with your dc, possibly for a bit older than 6, but even if you don’t read it with him, I’ve found the books really good for giving me child friendly simple ways of talking about stuff.

Thank you for taking the time to comment. I will have a look for those books. Very much appreciated. Thank you. Have a great Christmas!

@Enjoyeverymoment13 you could try an @ to see if you can get the OP's attention but as her DD will now be around 22, she might not be here anymore.

Hope you've find something to help

@toadstool hi, I was wondering if you had an update, or any advice please? I understand it’s been a very long time since we posted. I hope things worked out for you all in the end. X