Hello,
Hoping for some advice on how to handle something with my nearly 8 yo DD. She is doing really well, no behavioural problems, flourishing at school etc etc. When she was younger she was a bit sensitive/fussy - angsty about food spills, found the classroom noisy, liked to wear a particular hat all the time- etc. But nothing that ever became a big issue at all. Now she seems to have got over all of that.
Here comes the but. Which I know might seem super minor, and probably is. But I am interested in advice on how to handle it so it stays minor and to build resilience as she starts to enter tween/teen years.
She is EXTREMELY tidy and organised. Everything in her room has a place, each book has a particular place on the shelf. She is also a genius at finding things, even if they don’t belong to her - like a sibling’s lost shoe or whatever. This is all ok. It gets more tricky with some things that seem
more difficult for her - the main one is she has to line up her pillow centrally to her bed before she can sleep. This takes multiple checks to measure the gap on each side, and if I try to “jolly her through it” she gets quite upset. She used to do something similar before she left her room in the morning, obsessively checking that the lights were off.
It’s obviously a small thing in the grand scheme of life, but I am not sure whether to try to stop her (how?) or what. My internet sleuthing seems to suggest that you shouldn’t “indulge” OCD (if that’s what it is the beginning of). But I don’t know how to handle in practice....especially to start building techniques for if this gets “bigger”.
I know it’s not a big thing. (Especially compared to what many others handle). But would love any advice.