What do you tell your kids?

[Guest guest]

My 11 year old daughter has OCD. In the past we have attributed her

behavior to Sensory Processing Disorder and ADD (both of which may be

present, but also may be caused by the OCD) but our Dev Ped believes that

Anxiety/OCD was at the root of her issues. She is taking Zoloft and it has

made such a difference in her quality of life! At first we would have to

monitor her and make sure she took it in the morning but now she asks for it

if we forget to give it to her, so I think even she notices that she feels

better after taking it.

We haven't specifically told her about the OCD, at least not by name. We

have told her in the past that her " brain just works in a different way " and

she accepted that, because she has a marvelously creative mind and I guess

that just fit in with her self-identity somehow. :-) Her Dev Ped hasn't

really mentioned it to her by name either and is probably assuming that her

father and I will discuss it with her at home. I know how she will take

hold of something interesting and different and I'm concerned that if I tell

her about the OCD she will fixate on it somehow and turn it into a deficit

and not just a difference. I also don’t want her going around telling all

her friends that she has OCD because she is at a tender age and kids in her

grade are already mean enough without being given a reason. But on the

other hand, I'd like to get her some workbooks and be available to answer

her questions. I don't want to give her the feeling that it's a shameful

secret but that's it's just part of who she is and not something " wrong " .

Am I making sense here? She's smart enough to know that we are seeing a

doctor that her sister doesn't see and she's taking medication, and that

those two things mean something, and it's possible that her imagination is

concocting something worse than OCD. She knows that before the Zoloft she

worried a lot and now she is more relaxed.

How much did you tell your children about what's going on with them? I want

my daughter to know that yes, she has OCD, but it's just one thing about her

and does not at all define her. To add something else to the mix, she has a

younger sister (age 8) who is exceptionally smart for her age and I worry

that if my younger daughter knew about the OCD she would use it as a weapon

against her sister. Am I worrying too much? Delaying the inevitable? :-)

Kim A.