Helping Kids Understand the Difference Between Obsessions and Compulsions The biggest gift we can give our kids with OCD is knowledge. The more they understand how OCD works, the more effective they’ll be at crushing it. One of the biggest areas of confusion is the difference between obsessions and compulsions and why it matters. In this week’s Youtube video, I explain to kids and teens […]
How to Help a Child with Both Autism and OCD Many parents who are raising children with both Autism and OCD find themselves in a no man’s land of sorts. Professionals treating Autism don’t always understand OCD and those treating OCD don’t always understand Autism. Ugh. What a struggle. That is why talking to Dr. Rebecca Sachs is like talking to a rare unicorn. Her […]
Helping Kids Who Struggle to Eat with ARFID and OCD OCD is scary enough, but when it starves your child it is alarming. That is how it feels when OCD goes for the one thing your child can’t live without – food. In this episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk about ARFID and OCD. ARFID stands for Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder […]
Helping Kids with Anxiety or OCD Develop Self-Compassion Kids with anxiety and OCD often struggle with self-love and self-compassion. It is developmentally common for all kids to struggle with self-compassion, but when you have anxiety and OCD it can be even harder. In this episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast I talk with Madina Alam, a Clinical Advisor with NOCD about how we, as […]
OHow to Overcome OCD: What Many People Get Wrong Often in my practice people asked, “Natasha, when will the OCD thoughts and feelings go away?” I would tell them they are asking the wrong question. What they should be asking is, “When will I be able to handle the discomfort these thoughts and feelings cause?” Because that is really what we are doing in OCD […]
OCD and Numbers: How to Help Our Kids Break Free Numbers can imprison our kids and turn them into counting machines. Often kids with OCD will have a favorite number or set of numbers. They might have a hated number or set of numbers. They might have to do things in evens or odds, but never both. In this week’s Youtube video, I talk to […]
Interview with Dr. Shefali | Helping Mothers Turn Pain into Power Dr. Shefali is a prominent clinical psychologist and the New York Times best selling author of The Conscious Parent and The Awakened Family. In her new book, A Radical Awakening, she talks to women about how to take their pain and turn it into power. According to Oprah Winfrey, “The world needs to know. […]
Helping Kids When OCD Makes them Fearful of Lying OCD likes to bother kids about many things. It likes to tell them they might do something they would never do. It makes them question what they say and how they say it. Often with Moral OCD, kids will become fearful of lying. They might worry that they will lie, that they did lie or that […]
When You Hit Compassion Fatigue with Your Child’s Anxiety or OCD None of us signed up to raise a child with anxiety or OCD. It wasn’t what we dreamed of when we poured over all the pregnancy and parenting books. And yet, here we all are, trying to not only survive, but thrive with our kids and their struggles. What happens when compassion runs dry? […]
How Understanding Anxiety & OCD Themes Can Help Your Child Anxiety and OCD come in many flavors. Often we even name these flavors with various titles like symmetry OCD, Harm OCD, Separation Anxiety, Emetophobia etc. Does it really matter what theme of anxiety or OCD my child has? Yes and no. There are pitfalls to wearing blinders and only focusing on your child’s anxiety or […]
How Confessing OCD Thoughts Grows Your Child’s OCD Many parents don’t realize that when our kids “confess” their ocd thoughts, they are often partaking in an OCD compulsion. Confessing behavior is almost always missed by parents. They often readily offer reassurance not realizing they are actually talking to their child’s OCD, not their child. So regardless of whether your child is getting effective treatment for […]
Why Anxiety or OCD Therapy is Not Enough for Our Kids Many of us think that if only we can find a qualified anxiety or OCD child therapist, all of our child’s struggles would go away. I wish that were true. I wish that was the case for the children that I have treated and for my own children. But the truth is, as parents […]
How Avoidance Grows Our child’s Anxiety or OCD Most parents don’t see avoidance as an integral part of their child’s anxiety or OCD. They often don’t realize that avoidance is one of the fastest ways to grow anxiety. It is also one of the most common types of compulsions in OCD. In this week’s Youtube video for kids and teens, I discuss how avoidance grows […]
How to Help Our Kids when Anxiety and OCD Lead to Depression Having anxiety or OCD can be depressing. It can make your child feel hopeless, overwhelmed and discouraged. It can rob them of the things they used to enjoy one fear and one compulsion at a time. Clinical Depression can be a comorbid condition with anxiety or OCD, but in this Youtube video I […]
How Self-Esteem Plays a Role in Kids with Anxiety or OCD Anxiety and OCD will often take a swing at our child’s self-esteem. It can do that with the anxious or intrusive thoughts it bombards them with. It can do that by paralyzing them with fear, as they watch their peers not struggle. It can also be present alongside anxiety or OCD. It can help […]
