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Daniel Leigh is a 13-year-old high school student living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He is known for being pretty strange, although he tries hard for people to not notice his strange habits, which he calls “zaps” These are things like stacking cups a certain way, counting things over and over, avoiding certain numbers, and flipping light switches on and off.

Max is Daniel’s best friend, who doesn’t judge Daniel for his odd behavior. They both play on the Erie Hills Elephants football team, where Daniel is the backup punter and he says is basically the glorified water boy. He spends time stacking cups during practice, never expecting to actually be needed on the field. One day, he was actually used to kick and he scored the winning touchdown for his team. Things didn’t change for him until he receives a letter and becomes friends with a girl known by the school as “Psycho Sara.” She asked Daniel to go on a journey with her to find her father. Daniel looks up to his own father, so he decides to help Sara.

After discovering that Sara’s mother’s boyfriend did not kill her father, they find out that he committed suicide by overdosing. This leads Sara to get personal with Daniel, telling her about her struggled with depression and OCD. She gives Daniel a book about OCD and tells him that it might be what he has. Daniel realizes that he is not alone with his disorder and he begins to feel normal. Daniel and Sara become close friends after their journey together and she helps him work through his struggles.

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Personal Connection & Reflection to OCDaniel

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Personal Connection & Reflection to OCDaniel

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My personal connection to OCDaniel is that I have a family member that struggles with OCD. He doesn’t talk about it much, but I’ve noticed habits over the years while we were growing up. He would constantly smell his hands and need to wash them after he touched something. He would apply hand sanitizer a numerous amount of times, thinking there were still germs on him. I remember him telling me that he doesn’t know why but he always has to do things in threes. Like Daniel, he would flick the light switch on and off three times. He would do this same thing when shutting doors and drawers too. I didn’t understand it when I was younger, but now I know so much more about this disorder and I am glad that he has it under control more now that he has seen a doctor.

I really liked this book because it showed me an inside view of what it can be like to live with OCD. Daniel hid it mostly, so a lot of people didn’t know he actually had it. It saddens me to know that some people feel like they have to hide their disorders and they get bullied for being different. Despite his struggles, Daniel was able to find a friend who was just like him. I am happy that he met Sara and they shared that connection with OCD. I think it is important that people who are struggling with a disorder are able to turn to someone like them or someone who is nonjudgmental, like his friend Max.

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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a mental health disorder that affects people of all ages. A person can get caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts or urges that trigger distressing feelings. Compulsions are behaviors an individual engages in attempt to get rid of the obsessions and/or decrease the stress. Most people have obsessive thoughts or compulsive behavior at some point, but that doesn’t mean they have OCD. In order for OCD to be diagnosed, these cycles of obsessions and compulsions becomes so extreme that is takes up a lot of their time and interferes with their life.

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What is OCD? | International OCD Foundation

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Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health disorder that affects people of all ages and walks of life, and occurs when a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images, or urges that trigger intensely distressing feelings.…

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This short movie clip interviews children struggling with OCD. They describe things they face each day and how it impacts their life. These children explain their obsessions and compulsions, which vary between them. I would recommend watching this clip!

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Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disorder of the brain and behavior that often begins in childhood. OCD causes severe anxiety in those affected. OCD involves both obsessions and compulsions that take a lot of time and get in the way of important activities, such as school and extracurricular activities, developing friendships, and self-care.

Obsessions are intrusive and unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that occur over and over again and feel outside of the child's control. These obsessions are unpleasant for the child and typically cause a lot of worry, anxiety, and distress.

Common obsessions may include:

Worrying about germs, getting sick, or dying.

Extreme fears about bad things happening or doing something wrong.

Feeling that things have to be "just right."

Disturbing and unwanted thoughts or images about hurting others.

Disturbing and unwanted thoughts or images of a sexual nature.

Compulsions (also referred to as rituals) are behaviors the child feels he or she "must do" with the intention of getting rid of the upsetting feelings caused by the obsessions. A child may also believe that engaging in these compulsions will somehow prevent bad things from happening.

Common compulsions may involve:

Excessive checking (re-checking that the door is locked, that the oven is off).

Excessive washing and/or cleaning.

Repeating actions until they are "just right" or starting things over again.

Ordering or arranging things.

Mental compulsions (excessive praying, mental reviewing).

Frequent confessing or apologizing.

Saying lucky words or numbers.

Excessive reassurance seeking (e.g., always asking, "Are you sure I'm going to be okay?").

In general, OCD is diagnosed when these obsessions and compulsions become so time-consuming that they negatively interfere with the child's daily life. Typically, the obsessions and compulsions become gradually more severe over time until they get to this point.

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Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disorder of the brain and behavior that often begins in childhood. OCD causes severe anxiety in children affected. OCD involves both obsessions and compulsions that take a lot of time and get in the way of important childhood activities, such as school and extracurricular activities, developing friendships, and self-care.

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How can Teachers Support Students with OCD?

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How can Teachers Support Students with OCD?

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This article highlights the obsessions common in children with OCD and shares behaviors that teachers often see. Most importantly, it provides tips on how to help students with OCD. Some of these include seating arrangements, extended time for tests and assignments, giving them books on tape, breaking homework into chunks, and not making them read out loud. These suggestions vary depending on the student and the severity of their disorder. It is important to be supportive and positive with the students and make them feel as comfortable as possible.

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Children who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are plagued with unwanted thoughts, images or impulses that are difficult to suppress, causing them great stress and worry. These are called obsessions. To alleviate the anxiety caused by their obsessive thoughts, they perform repetitive, ritualized actions called compulsions. A child with OCD might need to line things up, touch things in a certain order when leaving the room or wash his hands repeatedly.

Obsessions Common in Kids With OCD

Contamination: Kids with this obsession are sometimes called "germaphobes." In schools, this plays out with kids worrying about other kids sneezing and coughing, touching things that might be dirty or getting sick in many different ways. This is the most common obsession seen 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, kids might worry that their thoughts can cause someone to get hurt, or get sick. A child might think, "Unless my things are lined up in a certain way, mom will get in a car accident."

Catastrophizing: Some kids easily jump to the conclusion that something terrible has happened. For example, if her parents are five minutes late picking her up, a girl who is catastrophizing might tell herself that they've decided to abandon her.

Scrupulosity: This is when kids have obsessive worries about offending God or being blasphemous in some way.

What ifs: Kids may be plagued by a lot of different kinds of thoughts about bad things they could do. "What if I hurt someone? What if I stab someone? What if I kill someone?"

The "just right feeling": When OCD first develops, from about 6 to 9 years of age, kids may not know why they are doing something, but just that they need to do it until they get what we call the "just right feeling." So: "I'll line these things up until it just kind of feels right, and then I'll stop." And then over time - in the 9- to 12-year-old range - it evolves into magical thinking and becomes more superstitious in nature.

Behaviors You Might See in Students With OCD

Frequent requests to go to the bathroom: This could be to wash hands, if someone near the child was coughing or sneezing, or if she touched something that she perceives as contaminated. She could be washing items-pens, pencils, backpacks, books. It could also be an excuse to get out the classroom and just be away from everyone, and have some respite.

Constant reassurance-seeking: This takes the form of repetitive questions. "Are you sure that's the answer? Could you tell me again? Did you hear what I said?" Checking doors, windows, lockers, desks. Over and over and over again.

Getting stuck on tasks: Sometimes kids with OCD will need to finish something to completion, or understand it to completion, before they're able to move on. So if a child is working out what he did wrong on a math test, and the teacher says, "Now let's open the textbook and start a new chapter," he's not going to be able to shift gears.

Retracing: If a child leaves the classroom and worries that she left a pencil behind, she'll go back into the classroom and go to her desk and check. If she had a bad thought as she went through the doorway, she might have to "fix it" by going back through the doorway again saying a good word. If she had a bad thought when she went down a flight of stairs on the way to class, she might need to go back up that same stairway at the end of the period, even if it means being late to her next class.

Obsessive erasing: A child could be erasing a lot because the letters have to look perfect. Or he could have used a word that disturbs him. For example, if he has a fear of vomiting and he's written the word vomit, he might not be able to stand seeing that word, so he erases it. Kids start having erasers worn down to the metal. Teachers start to see holes in the paper. Words will be drawn over on the back of the page. A lot of different areas of writing become problematic.

Behaviors Often Confused With Another Disorder

Some behaviors associated with OCD are easy to confuse with ADHD, learning problems or being oppositional.

Distraction: If a child is busy thinking that if she doesn't turn the pen cap and count to four the right way then her mom is going to get sick, she's not going to be paying attention in class. And if her teacher calls on her to answer a question, her distraction might look like ADHD, but it isn't.

Slowness on exams, papers and tasks: Sometimes when kids take a long time, they're struggling with the perfectionism of needing to do things the right way. This could look like learning problems, or inattention, but it isn't.

Avoidance: Teachers might see a child who doesn't want to sit on the floor, or pick things up that touched the floor, or get his hands dirty in art class. He may avoid a lot of playground activities - kids with germ fears will view the playground the way some adults view the subway: it's gross. Why touch anything there?

Tapping and touching symmetrically: If a child sits down at her desk and she accidentally kicks the chair of the kid next to her with her right foot, she's going to have to then kick it with her left foot. That might look like somebody who's being oppositional, or somebody who's got too much energy, but actually it's OCD.

Complaints of anxiety and fatigue: There's one interesting theory that kids with OCD are smarter than other kids. And if you consider how much thinking they're doing, they're really using their brain more frequently than a lot of other kids are. But when that's coupled with a lot of anxiety, you can have a lot of fatigue. So it's common for kids with OCD to want to come home and take a nap after school.

How to Help Students With OCD

For children struggling with OCD, functioning in school can be complicated and very difficult. Here are some things you can do to help them, and the class as a whole, focus on learning:

Seating arrangement: If the school has noisy hallways, you might not want to have a child with OCD sit by the door. You might have her sit in the front, where she's less able to hear the noise and can stay more focused on her work. On the other hand, a child who has very observable symptoms, and doesn't want other kids to see her fidgeting with her hands, rocking or getting up a lot, might be better off closer to the door, toward the back of the room.

Extended time for tests and papers: If writing is a problem for a child who needs to find the perfect way to say something, he's going to need more time to finish those essay questions or papers.

Laptops for writing: If writing and rewriting/erasing is really problematic for a child, consider letting her use a laptop for taking notes, and having all assignments be typed instead of handwritten.

Private testing rooms: Research is quite clear that kids with OCD do better, are less overwhelmed and are more in control of their thoughts and their reactions if they're in a quiet place away from the other kids.

Skip reading out loud: Kids who feel they need to read perfectly may have to go back and reread sentences or whole paragraphs over and over to make sure they've got them right. So reading becomes a very laborious task, and reading in front of the class can become a nightmare. So if we know doing this is a problem for children, we can spare them.

Books on tape: If kids get so hung up reading that it takes forever, listening to the books can be a solution.

Break homework into chunks: If looking at a whole page of math makes kids feel overwhelmed and anxious - think of the potential for mistakes! - the problems can be broken up over four pages. It helps kids stay focused on doing the problems instead of worrying.

How to Minimize Behavioral Problems

Plan an escape route: Try working out a communication system so that if the student feels symptoms coming on, she can signal to you and leave the classroom, or go to a protected place in the classroom, without interrupting the class. It can prevent an embarrassing and disruptive blowup of symptoms in the classroom, and the other kids picking on or bullying her about it.

Be aware of triggering events: It's very important for teachers to know what kind of things might trigger the symptoms. Fatigue is a huge piece of OCD, and it can be exacerbated by medication. So it's important to know that if a child is drowsy in class, and maybe he's putting his head down, it's not because he's being oppositional or disrespectful, but because he's overwhelmed with fatigue.

Advance notice: Irritability and frustration are two of the longer-lasting things that kids with OCD are feeling on a daily basis. Changes in schedule can be very disruptive for a child with OCD, so it can be helpful for teachers to give advance notice of things. Kids who know what to expect are less likely to be thrown by the change.

Children with OCD are often teased and bullied because of their symptoms. Kids feel very uncomfortable about their rituals, knowing that they're being watched. It can be helpful to educate the whole class about what's going on, especially if a child is going to be in the same school for a number of years, and it can inspire a surprising amount of support from other children.

Peer understanding program: A peer understanding program includes a presentation in the classroom that explains (with the child participating) what OCD is. The child might say, "Listen, I have OCD. It's an anxiety disorder. It makes me think that my hands are dirty and I have to wash my hands a lot, so if you see me getting up and going to the sink to wash my hands, that's why." Psychologists can role-play with the teacher and child ahead of time, to anticipate questions his classmates might ask, and how to answer them.

A buddy system: A buddy is like a peer coach who sits next to the child and prompts him to keep up with note taking and staying on task. It can be great for the buddy, to foster a sense of confidence and pride and to be able to help someone in need, and great for fostering friendship.

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Lo sentimos, la página que usted busca no se ha podido encontrar. Puede intentar su búsqueda de nuevo o visitar la lista de temas populares. Children who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are plagued with unwanted thoughts, images or impulses that are difficult to suppress, causing them great stress and worry.