OCD and kiddo and me
September 20th, 2011 / No Comments » / by admin
Recently we took our daughter to a psychiatrist to see if we could figure out if there was some underlying reason for some of the behaviours that she’s been exhibiting for the past few years.
We already knew that she had some problems with anxiety from some of the trouble that she got into school in both pre-k and kindergarten with (e.g. one time she couldn’t get the top of a gluestick off fast enough and her response was to chuck it across the room). After getting a few notes home and two trips to the assistant principals’ office about specific incidents, she saw a counsellor for the 5 free appointments that BCBS allows and that improved her behaviour at that point considerably since the lady gave her suggestions for how to better respond in stressful situations, and that worked for the most part. Also at around the same time kiddo got a new best friend in her class at school, a little girl who has a twin brother with severe autism so even at the age of 5 this girl was called the “little mother” because of her patience level and ability to calm kiddo down when she could see her about to act out over something.
Unfortunately, the little girl was placed in another class this year for first grade, so kiddo has (thankfully) so far been okay for the most part at school other than just general boredom since she’s reading above the average level of kids in her class and sometimes just wants a challenge that she doesn’t always get from the classroom.
Even though she’s doing better in school behavior-wise, she’s still been having her “moments” at home for a long time. If we go grocery shopping, and make the mistake of making a list, and not everything on said list can be located, she’s had a breakdown in the checkout aisle at the store because we didn’t get every single thing that was on the list. She has also made “lists” for herself for a few years of what she plans to do on certain days, and if you attempt to get her to deviate from that internal plan…good luck!
Sometimes she can just go with the flow if she’s not at home or in a familiar environment, but not always… For example – She went on a trip to visit her great-grandmother with her grandmother a few months ago, and apparently when my daughter decided she wanted to color and blow bubbles, even her grandmother couldn’t convince her to swap one task out for another.
If she does get to where she has a fit over something in particular, the best way to describe it is that her ears are closed while her mouth is open. She will dwell on the particular thing she she’s upset out and repeat that word while having a hissy fit. Once she’s gotten it out of her system though, it’s like the switch flips and poof, back to normal-kiddo.
So we made an appointment for her with the psychiatrist that I mentioned at the beginning of this entry and she’s had 2 appointments with her so far. At the first appointment, the psychiatrist came right out and said that both kiddo and I had OCD based on all of the things that I had told her regarding kiddo and I.
Not really a surprise for me since I’ve been getting told that for 10+ years from people around me and in my personal therapy attempts had only gotten so far as working on my known anxiety issues since at that time those were the most vital for me to work on.
However, with kiddo now being labeled OCD as well, I’m torn between being feeling that I genetically cursed her with something she will have to deal with long-term & being relieved that now we can start working on some of the related issues that we already knew that she has and help her starting now instead of when she’s older and feeling more impacted by things.
Kiddo also was written a prescription for Celexa that she’s started to take and amazingly, even the first time I gave her the medicine, she didn’t complain at all about having to take medication in pill form. Given how resistant she is to change and pushes back on things, I was extremely impressed that she was not only willing to take the meds, but that she’s wanting to because even she gets frustrated with her behavior at times. Sometimes her maturity about certain things already at age 6 really amazes me.
