Oh. OCD.

How do I tell you that there is something wrong with my child?

How do I explain my lanky 10-year old’s toddler-like fits, his crippling fears over mundane things, his lengthy, peculiar rituals, his exhausting conversations that go nowhere but span across multiple days, or the downright rude things that come out of his middle-schooler-bucked tooth mouth?

I don’t know. I’m new at this.

I mean, I’m not new at having a child with abnormal tendencies. He’s shown glimpses of an obsessive level of stubbornness since infancy. I’m just new at understanding them – at understanding him, I guess.

Over the last couple of years, his… differentness… has shown itself with increasing vigor. This summer, the months before he will start 5th grade, have been the (so-far) culmination of difficulties. Instead of weeks or months between fits of strange behavior, there suddenly is almost no “normal” reprieve. I feel like I’m losing him behind a wall of… of… badness.  

My son has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

            He is plagued with obsessions and compulsions.

                        You do not have to repeat things to make them "feel right."

                        You do not have to wash your hands 4 times, for 45 seconds each.  

                        It is okay to use a school or public bathroom.

            He overestimates danger and so is tormented by bouts of intense fear.

                        You do not need to double lock every door and shut every window.

                        Your water bottle is not "contaminated."

                        No one is going to get into your bedroom with a grappling hook.

                        You do not need to sleep with the covers tightly over your head.

                        Please - for the love of God - stop coming into our room in the middle of the night asking to sleep on our floor and proceeding to scream about it for 30-75 torturous minutes.

           

            He craves absolute certainty and is crippled with stress in the absence of such.

                        Yes, I’ll be at the bus stop when you get off. Just like every previous 492 days of school.

                        Yes, those shoes match/will be comfortable/are weather-appropriate.

                        Yes, Dad will be home around 6 PM. Just like I told you 3 minutes ago.

             And to boot, his OCD sparks oppositional defiance that is frequent and persistent. Basically, he's almost always irritable, angry, or straight-up deifying instruction from adults with authority over him (ie. all adults) but particularly me.

I’m a fairly hard-lined parenter. Like: I already gave you an answer, there’s no discussion kind of parent. Like, you want to complain about that, now you can do this too kind of parent. (And, for the record, I call this good parenting.)

But my son is pretty much turning any shred of intuition, success, or aptitude I may have held as a parent into crap. It-doesn't-work, there-is-no-logic crap.

From the humbling ground of square-one, I am having to learn how to parent OCD. And it's way, way less intuitive and more time-consuming. It is smash-your-head-against-the-wall-difficult.

It feels like everything I've been fighting for parentally for the last decade is lost behind a wall of my son's irrational fears and emotions I have to help him (a) recognize are not real and (b) learn to fight against. 

It used be like, hey kid: use polite language and gracious manners. Apologize. Look a person in the eye and speak up. Struggle to think of others. Lying is unacceptable.

Now, it's like: you will drink out of the same cup twice. Yes you can.

I don't know where it goes from here. I don't.

My husband and I are constantly fighting for our gentle, agreeable, funny child trapped behind these struggles with thoughts stronger than he has learned to fight and emotions bigger than he has learned to sort. 

We go to therapy. He does. My husband and I do so we can parent him - and hopefully not lose our minds in the process. There are books for us and workbooks for him. We're talking about medication. And really, we're struggling every day with him. 

Oh, so, I guess that’s how I tell you there is something wrong with my child.

The mental illness in my son's brain is the new Terrible in our lovely lives. But onward we plod, fighting for the greater Lovely. Fighting for our boy.

Summer With Kids: Have a Plan

What do you do with your kids during the summer?

Do you ever get that question? I certainly do. Give them a popsicle and lock them outside. Uh, just kidding. The answer in our household is often routine. When nothing else is scheduled, we use a schedule.

Because I work full-time and also put in a lot of volunteer hours, I’m no stranger to using careful scheduling and time management to stay on top of an otherwise overwhelming amount of tasks and information. It can get crazy otherwise. Can I get an amen?! I also have a child with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who does better when he clearly knows what to expect.

Basically, because I prefer a sane household, I enforce a schedule.

There’s a lot of summer schedule suggestions for kids floating around out there. In case anyone may benefit from ours, here’s what we do:

A lot of the summer we are traveling. Or there’s the occasional day-outing or play date. This schedule is not for those days but for all the others. It's for the normal, in-between, kids-bickering, kids-bored days.

May you enjoy the time with your littles this summer, Mamas. Godspeed.

And when all else fails, don’t be afraid to give them a popsicle and lock them outside.