“My son says he loves me 100 times a day. It’s not cute any more.”
“My daughter won’t let us take the trash to the curb to be picked up. She goes behind our backs and pulls items out of the trash and puts them away because they will never exist again. What is going on?”
If you see kids with OCD, these are the kinds of desperate parents you have in your office every day. Typical parenting advice just doesn’t seem to apply when it comes to OCD, and normal parent supports like grandparents or friends often are at a loss about what to make of these types of problems.
One of our most important roles we have as therapists is normalizing the otherwise incomprehensible aspects of OCD, and helping reduce the shame, secrecy and stigma that can grow without education.
Here is a great article to give to the parents of every kid you work with who has OCD. Natasha Daniels offers sound advice to parents about this often-misunderstood mental health problem. Best of all, she gives the advice in a way that makes it relatable, like just another of those many types of parenting lessons we never knew we needed to learn.
This post is sponsored by nOCD. Dowload this mobile tool for free.