Is Your Son or Daughter Depressed?

It might initially be difficult to determine whether a child is just “down in the dumps,” or whether he or she is experiencing a major depressive episode. Parents can watch for symptoms that are persistent, troubling, and interfering with typical life functioning. In a major depressive episode, many of the following signs may be observed: It’s persistent. First, the sadness has been ongoing for at least two weeks or more, without lifting. It’s causing changes in the family dynamics or is contributing to family stress at home. Loss of enthusiasm. The child is no longer interested in activities that were … Continue reading →

Should “Perfectionist” Kids Get Special Accommodations?

Sometimes it seems like my life is a long, continuous string of parent-teacher conferences, one right after the other. Today I had three, and the last one was for my sixth grader, Riley, who, for the purposes of this blog, we might just call “Mr. Perfectionist.” His teacher sat across from us at a long table, where she pushed several papers over toward me. “Any questions about his grades?” she asked. “Yes… well… they don’t seem indicative of his abilities,” I said. “I’m wondering what you think is going on.” This was becoming a trend for Riley. Although his grades … Continue reading →

Ten Ways to Help Your Child with OCD (or Anxiety) Succeed in School

The child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or generalized anxiety can have a difficult time in school. Obsessive thoughts and an intense need to perform rituals can cause a lot of difficulty with learning. Often parents are extremely frustrated just getting their son or daughter to school in the first place, when the child changes her mind ten times about the clothes she wants to wear, or washes his hands eight times before meeting his carpool. Then, at school, the teacher must deal with difficult behaviors while still trying to manage the classroom. These children need a lot of love, patience, and … Continue reading →

What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in Children?

It’s common for children to get anxious about various things they face in their lives. A normal amount of worry can help motivate a child to complete a task, try his best in a performace, use caution in a dangerous situation, or show empathy for others. Worry is a natural human emotion. However, kids with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)are ruled by anxiety and worry. Not only is the amount of anxiety they experience unnatural, but the fears themselves are often absurd. For example, a child with OCD might worry that her bus will crash if she doesn’t sit in precisely the … Continue reading →

Impulse Control Disorder

Shortly after the boys moved in, the words “dysfunction” and “disorder” became commonplace in our everyday language. There were a multitude of them, some diagnosed, others lying in wait to be discovered in the boys’ everyday behavior. We were aware of Randy’s ADHD, FAE, and learning disabilities. We soon learned Daniel had real and critical problems with Attachment Disorder and hoarding issues. However, it took us awhile to realize there was a serious issue with Randy; he had been diagnosed with Impulse Control Disorder, but we weren’t aware of it until we experienced his behavioral symptoms. Our first inclination of … Continue reading →

Have You Failed to Recognize Your Child’s Anxiety Disorder?

We assume that parents intuitively know when their child has a problem. Yet in about half the cases of childhood anxiety, mom and dad have failed to recognize what is going on (Berstein and Layne 2004). See if you’ve observed any of the following symptoms in your son or daughter (he or she may have several or many): The child: worries about as many as six things at a time. has difficulty falling asleep, unlike most children who are sleeping twenty minutes after going to bed. wakes in the night or early morning and can’t get back to sleep. has … Continue reading →

Postscript–Hoarding Humor

Through the trials and tribulations of educating ourselves and empowering Daniel to deal with his hoarding issues, there were some light moments in our otherwise serious quest for answers. The following are some examples of the humorous side of our life with an obsessive/compulsive hoarder. STOCKPILING We live on the coast of Texas and are susceptible to hurricanes. During the season, we keep an extra amount of canned goods, batteries, and bottled water on hand. Daniel has his own hurricane emergency kit. It includes seven packets of taco sauce from Jack in the Box, a stale package of croutons from … Continue reading →

Compulsive Hoarding-Part 3

In the third part of Compulsive Hoarding, I would like to discuss the strategies we employed in our attempt to positively retrain Daniel in his obsessive behaviors beyond the kitchen and his food issues. Medications are available for the treatment of obsessive behavior. Because the symptoms are usually included in the categories of Attachment Disorder and Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder, some physicians prescribe meds (used to treat these specific disorders) to assist in minimizing the symptoms. Paul and I declined this resource of treatment. We felt in the beginning, and still maintain the logic, Daniel’s compulsive behavior was due to his circumstances … Continue reading →

Compulsive Hoarding-Part 2

In Part One of the Compulsive Hoarding article, I covered several of the symptoms displayed with hoarding and some examples of why a child might conceal food and possessions to the point of irrational behavior. The next step was to make him feel secure enough to minimize and in some areas alleviate the symptoms he was displaying. After realizing our child’s dysfunctional behavior then documenting it to find the pattern and the degree of his hoarding, we began working on the problem. When we first noticed the food hoarding, we didn’t confront Daniel with it. Paul and I wanted to … Continue reading →

Is your child attached to you?

I know this seems to be a silly question for those of you with a biological child. But what you should know is that it is a very real problem effecting biological and adopted children. There have been many blogs about this under the adoption topic. However it is not solely an adoptive family problem. Children that spend a lot of time away from home, may it be in the hospital for a long period of time can develop an attachment disorder of some kind, this is just one example of what may cause an attachment disorder. What is an … Continue reading →