Anxiety/OCD

[TherapeuticVino]

Hi

My daughter has always been a worrier and we had to move her from her v small state school to a selective private as she was bored and getting increasingly anxious (didn't completely link the two at the time). She is now in year 4 and very happy at her new school but suddenly the anxiety/OCD is creeping back. Hand washing, repetitive questions etc. She is top of her accelerated class and today has been told she is G&T which "explains" why her brain won;t shut down when she isn't mentally challenged.

I'm struggling with this so no flames PLEASE - how can I help her rest when "rest" brings on the worrying - she is fine when she's busy at school. I'm worried that if she literally can't shut down she's going to burn out :(

Is it possible that these are linked with slight Aspergers? Not saying this because of her intelligence, just because she sounds similar to someone I know.

Funny you should say that babyapplejack - I have mentioned that to her teacher as my nephew is aspergers and she reminds me so much of him but no-one is interested as she is "an achiever" so she's apparently fine. She's not fine :(

People with Aspergers can be achievers, they can even fit in socially and have friends. My personal belief is that sometimes, Aspergers can often give a predisposition to anxiety and constant brain function. I also think that Aspergers is heavily genetic, allbeit in a complex way and it can show up differently in members of the same family/extended family - your nephew having aspergers would really make me think that it is a strong possibility for your DD.

In terms of diagnosis, the primary reason for seeking it is to get the child some help. However, it is not clear what help the school could/would provide for her even if she had a diagnosis because she appears to be functioning fine. If I was in your position, I would think about what practical actions the school could take to help her (not in the context of Aspergers, just generally) and ask them to implement these. As she is in a private school, they should be receptive to implementing a suggestion from you and also they should have a higher staff:pupil ratio so they can keep an eye on her. If they won't listen to Aspergers, approach it from a mental wellbeing point of view maybe. Maybe you could talk to your DD and ask her what might make her feel better, what makes her worry etc so that you might try to ease/conquer these things.

Thank you so much for your replies - having had a bit of an emotional day I can't tell you how relieved I am to get such positive helpful responses. The school are being great - they really want to help her but need to know how (don't we all!). she has started seeing a counsellor today so I am hoping things will improve but would love to hear from other people who have "been there"!

I agree with babyapplejack that talking to your DD to help her to calm down and relax is a good idea.

Perhaps you could also help her to develop other hobbies/interests, such as music, drama, craft or other creative activities. Good hobby will provide outlet for her energetic brain, and help her to relax. Music and painting are known to be very relaxing for people engaged in academic/science.

I have a niece very much like this. There is a very large discrepancy between her verbal IQ (bordering 160) and her performance IQ (mid to low 120s), which the psychologist thought might be contributing to her anxiety - as though one part of her brain was always having to work overtime to make up for the comparative inadequacies of the other parts! Having a bit more of an insight into her real academic strengths and weaknesses and catering better for these does seem to have helped bring her anxiety back down to a level where it is no longer interfering with her ability to get on happily with her daily life.

(relative inadequacies...).

I found with my DD (G&T 20yo) ,she needed to manage the OCD and anxiety traits she has. She can't stop them, but she can recognise when they are taking over and channel them into less self-destructive paths.
It also helps that she will listen to me now, when she was Y4 she would shut nme out,no suggestions acceptable and would get into repetitive answers that went round on circles with no escape.
Handwashing, she uses a lot of handcream. Brain not shutting down is fine when she's on an up but disaster when she's on a downwards spiral. Absolute need for routine, security and familiarity. If she's taking on a challenge it can only be one thing at a time, not multiple or she goes into meltdown.
She has a couple of activities she chooses to do that are stress relievers and help. I tend to spot trouble on the horizon and attempt to pre-empt if I can.
Her brother has Asperger's without the anxiety. He's much less likely to self-destruct.
Good that the school is looking for solutions as well, but I always have an internalhollow laugh when people think that parenting a truly G&T child must be wonderful.

Thanks for your replies. We tried some painting over the weekend which she seemed to really enjoy so we may try that again. I explained abstract art to her so we wouldn't have the usual meltdown that her picture didn't look like the subject - we painted squares and swirls instead. Great tip Treetop!

Goblinchild that sounds so familiar - we had a week of panicking because she was asked to play on the school netball team and she didn't know when she would change into her PE kit. She asked about 20 times and even when she was given an answer she was really worried about it....

Rabbitstew I will be interested to see the breakdown of the IQ test - the therapist she's started seeing said it would be very helpful information possibly for the same reasons as your niece.

I fear this is the beginning of a bit of a long road.......

TV - my son is 5 (Aug birthday) and in Y1, operating at top of Y3/4. He decided to start gymnastics after having a go with his sister's preschool class. It really has been fantastic. He burns off a lot of that anxious, nervous 'need to do more' energy there, and benefits from the structure and discipline it gives.

@Goblinchild - I know that hollow laugh very well ;) A friend of mine has a son on the SEN register and frequently says that she has it extremely easy compared to me, because at least she gets taken seriously and there are measures in place to do something about her child's 'differences'.

The anxiety which often goes hand in hand with G&T kids is hard to deal with. I dearly wish I could afford to move my son into a private school, if only because if I pay them they are forced to listen!! This horrible situation in Japan has my son in a tailspin, despite me banning the news/papers in the house; the school replied 'he's only 5 he won't understand it'. He understands plate tectonics and rudimentary geology and knows full well what an earthquake and tsunami can do, having absorbed his detailed geography encyclopedia months ago! Argh!

abeltasman we have had a panic about Japan too. I remember when Madeleine McCann went missing and DD (reception at the time, july bday) got worried about going on holiday incase someone killed her?? I had kept all news off around her and couldn't work out where it was coming from - turns out she had read all the newspaper headlines while I was paying for petrol.....

Is he worrying about an earthquake here?
Show him plate tectonics and that the UK isn't located near a fault line.
geology.com/plate-tectonics.shtml
I always found being calm, logical and honest was the best way of allaying fears.
Trying to say 'It won't happen here' without evidence wouldn't have worked with my DD.

That's what we've done, Goblinchild, though thank you for the tip! I reminded him that the earthquakes happened at plate boundaries and fault lines.. he reminded me that they were also caused by mine collapses, like the one under my sister's house - oops! I reminded him the geology under our house is a large coral reef (he is really good at finding fossils in the fields here, and even found an arrow head!) so we're fine ;)

I've also pointed out that we live on a hill, and therefore won't get flooded (a big big problem in our neck of the woods, DH and DS were both cut off in the July 2007 floods, me with a 6 day old baby, eek!). Seems to have appeased him. He begged me to show him the earthquake in Japan, and as I know that what he imagines is usually 100x worse than reality (EXCEPT in Japan's case, tragically), I showed him the most innocuous video of a room shaking with things falling off the shelf, and told him that couldn't happen here as that magnitude quake wouldn't occur here due to the geology, and it was just 'stuff' and no one got hurt in the video, as they know to hide under the desk.

Unfortunately I can't control what the other kids at school tell him (one described in vivid detail what they'd seen on TV, including the nuclear power station explosion erk), so I've had to tell him more than what I'd normally be comfortable sharing with him, knowing his anxiety levels about events like that. I'd rather he knew the bare facts as you said, rather than shield him completely.

Ah yes,it all sounds so familiar!

I have shades of this with ds.
I think they all think so much about everything that they over-analyse the risks and get in a tizz.

Ds' main thing has been about burglars. He goes on and on about them and it's hard because I can't promise it will never happen. I have reassured him that we have the alarm on and everything is locked. He is now also worrying about fires .