What Teachers Should Know About OCD
If you have a boy or a girl with OCD in your class, you need to know well what this disorder is about.
The children spend nearly a thousand hours a year in school, which means that teachers often spend more time with children than parents . With all this time spent together, it is especially important that teachers are informed about how to help a child with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) function better. Understanding the anxiety behind OCD is an important first step … but there are many more that must be known to understand the complexity of this disorder.
Bearing this in mind, it is important that teachers become aware of the importance of taking into account the idiosyncrasies of students, but not only of OCD children, but of any child they have in their classroom . Understanding your students is essential to be able to have a good relationship with them and for learning to take place much more easily. Each child is unique in the world and teachers must adapt to them and their interests, and not the other way around.
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THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO KEEP IN MIND
OCD is an anxiety disorder , and children with it struggle with obsessions or compulsions or both. What are obsessions and compulsions?
The Obsessions are thoughts, images or impulses unwanted and intrusive. Obsessions make children anxious.
Compulsions are things children need to do to get rid of anxiety. Teachers may notice these behaviors and find them confusing.
We use the analogy of a mosquito bite . When a mosquito bites you, it bites you, so to make yourself feel better you scratch, and while scratching one feels great, but as soon as you stop doing it, the itching gets worse. This is exactly how OCD develops . You feel anxious, so you do something to fix it temporarily, but that ritual makes it worse over time.
TYPES OF OBSESSIONS
Next we are going to explain to you what are the most common types of obsessions that exist in children with OCD:
- Pollution . The children with this obsession sometimes called “germófobos”. In schools, this plays with kids who worry about other kids sneezing and coughing, worrying about touching things that could be dirty, or getting sick in many different ways. This is the most common obsession we see in children.
- Magical thinking. This is a kind of superstition, like “step on a crack, break your mother’s back”, taken to extremes. For example, children might worry that their thoughts could make someone hurt or sick. A child might think, “Unless my things are lined up a certain way, Mom will be in a car accident.”
- Catastrophizing. Some children easily conclude that something terrible has happened. For example, if it takes your parents five minutes to pick you up from school , a girl who is falling apart could be said to have decided to drop out.
- Conscientiousness. This is when children have obsessive concerns about offending God or being blasphemous in some way.
What if … Children can be plagued with many different kinds of thoughts about bad things they might do. What if I hurt someone? What if I stab someone? What if I kill someone?
The “fair” feeling . Some children feel like they need to keep doing something until they get what we call the “right feeling.” When OCD first develops, around the ages of 6-9, children may not know why they are doing something, but they only know that they need to do it until they get the right feeling. So: “I’ll line these things up until it feels right to me, and then I’ll stop.” And then over time, in the 9-12 year range, it evolves into magical thinking and becomes more superstitious in nature.
Dr. Tabriella Perivolaris, Sara's mother and fan of fashion, beauty, motherhood, among others, about the female universe. Since 2018 she has been working as a copywriter, always bringing to her articles a little of her experience and experience as a mother and woman.