If your child is struggling with OCD symptoms, feel at a loss for how to help. Maybe you’ve tried using logic to help your child see how unlikely their worries are. Or, maybe you’ve been working really hard on relaxation and deep breathing techniques, but you aren’t seeing a lot of change. This is totally normal! The usual coping skills that help kids deal with anxiety and stress aren’t as helpful for OCD.
While many children with OCD benefit from counseling, there are still things you can try at home to help your child cope. You can help your child learn to understand what OCD is and how it works, and equip them with tools they can use to “fight back” against recurrent worries and rituals. Children with strong coping skills feel less alone, can manage their symptoms better, and they will likely progress through therapy more quickly, too. Let’s take a look at 5 coping skills you and your child can practice together.
Learn About How OCD Works
Obsessive-compulsive disorder, also known as OCD, is a mental health problem that is similar to anxiety, but with its own unique characteristics. It causes people to have unwanted worries or thoughts over and over again. To deal with these thoughts, people with OCD feel like they have to repeatedly do an action in order to relieve their anxiety or prevent something bad from happening. The repeated thoughts are called obsessions, and the repeated actions are called compulsions.
OCD often begins in childhood, and it can be confusing and frustrating for kids and parents alike. Kids really do not want to be thinking about the terrible things their OCD prompts them to think about. They may feel as though they’re going crazy, or worry that having bad thoughts means they are a bad person. Parents may be shocked by the seemingly out-of-the blue appearance of OCD worries. It can be tough to understand why a child is suddenly so afraid, especially when their worries do not seem logical or realistic.
The first step to coping with OCD is understanding what you’re dealing with. Books like Up and Down the Worry Hill and What to Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck teach kids that OCD is caused by a harmless “brain glitch” that keeps the brain from sorting out unhelpful thoughts. Books like these help children feel less alone, and can reduce feelings of shame and guilt that make it hard to get help. They also give kids helpful language to describe their experiences with OCD.
Cope by Focusing on Strengths, Not Worries
When your child comes to you with a problem, you naturally want to talk about it. We all want to be understanding, responsive parents, and heart-to-heart chats with our kids are part of the deal. This is a great approach for lots of childhood worries and struggles, but it doesn’t always work well for OCD.
The repeated worries that come with OCD aren’t logical. Kids with OCD often worry about events that are highly unlikely to happen, like a plane crashing into your home or contracting a rare disease. Sometimes, the worries don’t make much sense, such as being concerned that stepping on a sidewalk crack will cause something bad to happen.
Most kids know their fears aren’t realistic, but they still can’t stop thinking about them. Talking about the worries in detail and reassuring your child that nothing bad will happen is unlikely to make the worries stop. In fact, the more time we spend talking about and paying attention to OCD worries, the more likely they are to happen again.
You can help your child shift their focus away from the worry and towards something more productive: their own ability to cope. We can’t make anxiety go away, but we can help kids deal with their anxious feelings. Instead of asking lots of questions or giving lots of reassurance, praise your child for their effort to do hard things in spite of their worries. Remind them that they’re brave, strong, and capable of facing their fears…and that it will feel so amazing when they do.
Make an OCD “Worry Monster”
Parents may find themselves bending over backwards to try to soothe their child’s worries, or using tough love to try to muscle through activities that cause anxiety to flare. It’s exhausting, and can start to feel like a battle between parent and child. This leaves kids feeling frustrated or ashamed that they can’t just “get over” their symptoms.
Instead of fighting each other, parents and kids need to team up against the real enemy—OCD. We can help kids cope with their symptoms by externalizing OCD, meaning we imagine it as a force that isn’t a part of them and isn’t their fault. This helps to cut down on the shame kids feel, and can increase a child’s motivation to fight back.
A fun way to externalize OCD is by imagining it as an annoying pest, like a bug, creature, or monster. Ask your child to draw a picture that represents how they imagine their OCD. You might even give the creature a funny name. When you talk about your child’s struggles, blame them on this creature instead: “It sounds like Jim Bob is really giving you a hard time today.” It can inject some humor into a tough situation, and remind your child that they can choose whether or not to listen to what OCD is telling them to do.
Spot Unhelpful or Tricky Thoughts
Most of us go through life without questioning our own thoughts too much. We might misinterpret things at times, but it’s usually not a big deal. People with anxiety and OCD are much more prone to having overly negative, unhelpful thoughts. In particular, kids with OCD have a tough time dismissing thoughts that are upsetting or strange. Instead, these thoughts linger, and kids have to deal with the nagging, “what if?” feeling that comes with recurrent worries.
Kids with OCD can learn to notice when their thoughts are playing tricks on them. We call this skill metacognition, which means learning to think about your own thinking. Instead of just taking their thoughts at face value, kids can examine their worries like a detective. Over time, children can start to notice patterns in their own worries, which helps them not take the worries so seriously.
The book Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? is great for teaching this skill to younger children, and we cover it in depth in my online course for kids and tweens.
Practice “Talking Back” to OCD
So maybe your child has gotten very skilled at spotting their own unhelpful thoughts. What’s next? Kids with OCD have a couple options for coping with these unwanted worries: they can talk back to them, or simply ignore what OCD is telling them to do.
”Talking back” to a worry means finding something you can say to yourself instead that is more accurate or helpful. This could mean taking a huge worry and shrinking it down to a more realistic size, or reminding yourself that even when bad things happen, you can figure them out and move on. Talking back can also mean reminding yourself that you’re in charge of your thoughts, and don’t have to listen to the unhelpful ones. Here are a few examples of thoughts kids with OCD can use to “talk back:”
“I don’t have any proof that this worry will happen.”
“I’ve gone to school for 6 whole years, and I’ve never thrown up in class.”
“Even if something bad does happen, I can handle it.”
“This is just my OCD talking and I don’t have to listen.”
“I’ve had this worry a million times and it’s never come true.”
Learning and practicing this coping skill empowers children to stop taking their worries and urges so seriously. Eventually, children may feel ready to ignore their OCD by not following through with compulsive behavior when anxiety arises. Facing scary situations and dealing with the anxiety without rituals or compulsions is the core of Exposure and Response Prevention, the most common and effective therapy treatment for OCD.
More Coping Skills for Kids with Anxiety and OCD
If you’re looking for more ways to help a child with anxiety or OCD, consider checking out my online coping skills course, Worry-Free Tweens. In the course, you’ll find child-friendly, in-depth lessons on how anxiety works, how to deal with it, and why anxiety can actually be a superpower.
You and your child will learn how to notice unhelpful thinking patterns and shift into a more realistic mindset when worries occur. Together, you can learn how and when to use coping skills most effectively. You’ll also find advice for parents on how to support and encourage an anxious child while avoiding the traps that can accidentally worsen anxiety over time.
If the course sounds like what you’re looking for, you can access Worry-Free Tweens here.
Counseling for Kids with OCD in Davidson, North Carolina
Coping skills are a great place to start when you suspect OCD. However, many kids will need the support of a mental health professional in order to overcome their symptoms. OCD often impacts the whole family: everyone has to change the way they do things in order to keep a child’s “worry monster” happy. Counseling can help both you and your child learn new ways to deal with repeated worries and urges, so you can get back to having fun together.
I’m licensed to help kids with anxiety and OCD in North Carolina, New York, and Florida. I offer face-to-face therapy in Davidson, NC, just outside of Charlotte. For families who live farther away, we meet for online therapy using a secure platform similar to Zoom. Both kinds of therapy can be effective (and sometimes even fun) for kids and tweens.
If you’re curious about therapy for OCD, check out my post on ERP. You can also check out my FAQ to learn more about what therapy with me is like. To ask other questions or inquire about setting up an appointment, send me an email. I am always happy to help.
