My 10 yr old dd is driving me mad with her 'rules' and obsessive behaviour

[emsiewill]

Since she was a toddler, dd1 has been very keen on things being done her way, when she was a toddler, it seemed fairly normal toddler behaviour.

However, she hasn't grown out of it to any great extent.

It is usually worse when she is in a bad mood (mornings before school particularly bad).

Here are some examples of how it affects us all.

1. Dh makes her packed lunch, and makes the mistake of putting everything into her bag. She has to take it all out and put it all back in again as he has "done it wrong".

2. She has brushed her hair, dd2 walks past and (eg) accidentally catches her arm. Dd1 then has to take her hair out and start all over again.

I could go on with more and more examples, but don't want to bore you.

She has recently insisted that no-one goes in her room - I have to put her clean clothes outside, she puts them away (which she does do). She doesn't want the cleaner to clean her room / change her bed, which I have agreed to on the proviso she does it herself.

I just took some toys from one room and put them on the floor in her room (all the time taking care not to enter the room). She has gone ballistic, "why did you touch my things?", "you've messed up my room", "I can't go in there now, I'll have to take everything out and put it all away again".

I am finding this all quite exhausting, and find myself vacillating between agreeing to abide by (some of) her "rules" and tellling her that she is a child, and she will live by my rules.

What would you do? Are we making a rod for our back by falling in with these things?

Oh please sen her to my house to meet mydd1 who is same age and COMPLETELY THE OPPOSITE.
Maybe they could share a room for a while and sort each other out as we are dispairing this end .

Sorry, trying to make you smile a little.

I cant comment on OCD as I have no expereince in this but I do wonder if
you are giving her too much power and slowly you must regain that power back.
Not easy but, crikey this is not on when those hormones really kick in.

We found the School Nurse really helpful when we needed help/advice with child psych.
I think I would not go to the GP as your DD might be upset by this, instead the sch.nurse could have a ittle chat with just her ?
We got dd's class teacher on side and said we were struggling. Suddenly felt we had support from all angles.

(DD1 is a free spirit and I now know just how to cope with her unusual ways )

Gosh dreadful spellings, sorry.

Hmmm, think you are right about giving her too much power. She has always been very mature for her age, and able to argue her point of view very eloquently and coherently. I know I keep saying it, but it's just so emotionally exhausting trying to keep on top of her.

If your daughter is the complete opposite, I think they would probably kill each other!

I don't think there is a school nurse, in fact I'm pretty sure there isn't. Over the years when I've mentioned to her teachers that she has a temper etc, they just look at me incredulously, it's not a side of her she ever shows except when with family...

Every time I think it's getting to a point that we need to do something, she goes back to being calm and compliant.

Any of the daytime crowd got any thoughts?

I dont have any experience but have you had a look for any websites that deal with OCD in children.

Although she may not suffer with it full blown, they might give you some ideas of how to react and cope with it in the 'right' way.

And another bump

If it helps her to know in advance what is going to happen then could you sit down with her to draw up a basic timetable of what will be happening during the week?

There's a theory that some children use up so much energy trying to cope with the day-to-day goings on at school that when they get home they 'explode'. The families are left wondering what's wrong while the teachers don't see any problems at all.

My guess would be that she sees her room as a kind of sanctuary. It's the one room in the house that she can have real control over. In her eyes it's probably hugely frustrating when someone else comes along and moves things around in it or even just puts things in it.

In our house (I have 2 boys with AS/HFA) the rule is that obsessions are okay as long as they aren't interfering with anything else. Having things 'just so' in the morning, for example, is fine as long as it doesn't interefere with us leaving the house on time. If it's taking over too much then it has to go or a compromise needs to be found.

Funny you should say that coppertop, as she sat down in September and drew up a timetable of what she would do every day - when she would shower, practice flute etc, etc. Of course we can never stick to it and she did get quite stressed about it, but now has forgotten all about it. It did prompt her to say "I love spreadsheets mum"

Although she doesn't like unexpected changes in routine, it's really invasion of her 'space' / 'privacy' / 'things' that really gets her going. She just won't accept that I am going to have to "touch her stuff" sometimes, and that's just life...

Emsiewill, every school has a school nurse but they are not in resident they float around a number of schools under there area.
If you ask school they will tell you how to contact yours if you decide you would like to.

We found the same.
Every time I reached the point when I felt we needed help I would have a couple of good days and think, well maybe it's not so bad or maybe its the way I dont handle her properly?

When in desperation we went and spoke to our dd1's teachers they were in complete disbelief as she came across as an extremely compliant and very intelligent child ahead of her years. As it turned out this was one of the many things, actually, that was getting to her, that her friends were way behind if you can call it that.Also she was being picked on in class.
She had massive temper fits at me and home was the only place she could vent it.

Its better now and the Nurse put me in touch with the professionals who could help me deal her better.
They would even ring at the end of a day and just listen to me sob/ cheer. Fantastic.

I would look further into school, what's happening there, who her friends are, are there any enemies etc. Have they had a lot of work piled on them recently or a change of routine/teacher?
Start there and at least you can rule that one out.
No matter what anyone says, it IS hard being a kid these days, we had it easy I reckon.
Hope this helps in some way.

might also be worth a look at asbergous (no idea how to spell it...i am dyslexlic - sorry!!!) but its the opposite end to autism... i have a friend whos dd has it mildly...is lovely but can be v. hard work when things arent 'just right'? just another vieew point really but i also suffered with ocd tendencies untill i learned how to get them under control..unfortuatly it took my thirty something yrs!!!!

Thanks everyone for your input.

I think what we need to work on is helping her to overcome her constant quest for perfection, and to understand that just because something doesn't turn out the way she planned it, it isn't the end of the world.

Still haven't managed to look at any OCD websites, but hopefully will manage to get some coping strategies from there. I can really empathise with her - I was very similar to her as a child. My mum was the complete opposite, and therefore couldn't empathise at all. Sometimes I think that was actually better for me...

It does sound like OCD or the beginnings of to me.

I have aspergers and ocd tendancies.. however,i'm only obsessive compulsive when something upsets my established routine. (routine being a HUGE thing i have to go through to get things done)

The ocd is a coping symptom for me,i have to keep to my routine or i get very upset about things and paranoid with checking things and putting things where they belong

Perhaps try and establish a daily set routine for her and see if the ocd behaviour calms a little.

If it does you could be looking at high functioning autism, if not its a good chance its ocd. Either way,talk to your gp, if left unchecked ocd can become out of control and the longer you leave it rolling the harder it will be to fix.