Your child has been showing ritualized behaviors, and you’re struggling to understand why. They try to explain it to you, but it just doesn’t make sense. You watch your child spend hours compulsively doing these behaviors, and you just want your child to have peace again.
Child OCD
You see your child incredibly uncomfortable and wonder how to help them see how irrational they seem. You even notice yourself joining in your child’s rigid, repetitive behaviors because you just want them to feel better. It’s overwhelming your child, your family, and you…and something needs to change.
Your child’s stress level is beginning to impact almost every aspect of their life. It takes way too long to do simple things, like leaving the house or going to bed at night, and even the smallest tasks turn into battles. Lately, your child is sharing thoughts that you just don’t understand; they make little logical sense. They avoid people and situations that could be good opportunities for them because their expectations about the future are so scary, maybe even odd. They might be spending incredible amounts of time on what should be simple tasks.
You feel lost. Your child always seems scared or uncomfortable. It’s as if their thoughts have taken over and that they can’t control them. You just want your child to be happy.
So, here you are, wondering if your child needs therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Often, your child feels panicked, uncomfortable, or distressed in some way. They are struggling with everyday life, and their emotions are getting the better of them.
You truly want your child to have peace and refocus on just being a kid. But you have no idea how to help them overcome their symptoms which are causing them distress right now. You never imagined that you’d feel as helpless as you do seeing your child struggle. And, you certainly didn’t expect that you’d need to reach out for profession help.
Signs That Your Child Might Be Struggling with Obsessions and/or Compulsions (OCD)
- Behavioral: your child is engaging in unwanted repetitive behaviors that are getting in the way of their ability to function or causing incredible distress; your child is spending too much time to do simple tasks; your child is avoiding activities that your child values to prevent unwanted thoughts from occurring
- Cognitive: your child has unwanted thoughts, images, or urges; your child assumes that these unwanted thoughts are likely to occur; these thoughts are very frequent and time consuming
- Mood: your child often feels fear, dread, disgust, doubt, and/or discomfort
When You Seek Support for Child OCD from The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management
- Your child will reduce or even stop avoiding the people and places that they once enjoyed
- Your child will learn to positively cope with fear and discomfort
- You will learn parenting strategies to help your child reduce or stop obsessions and compulsions
- You will learn how to help your child better function at home and in school
- You and your child will grow closer together and enjoy spending more time together
The OCD Counseling Process
Therapy for child OCD is intended to help your child stop worrying and participate freely in their life. Together, your child and their therapist will work with scientifically-backed, evidence-based therapies to help them gain control of their inner and outer worlds in more effective ways.
Therapy for children with OCD is based upon helping them to learn to identify their triggers and overcome them in such a way as to be successful in school, family, and peer environments.
Here’s what to expect…
FIRST CONTACT: Free phone consult
Prior to beginning treatment with us, we want to make sure that we are a good fit for you and your child’s needs. For this reason, we offer a free 15-minute initial phone consult to learn more about your/your child’s current circumstances and to determine if we are the best resource for you. Assuming that we are a good match, you will then schedule an intake session.
WEEK ONE: Intake Session
During this first session, the assigned therapist will meet with you as the parent(s) or guardian(s) to gather background information on your child and to fill out rating scales to provide an assessment baseline upon which to build our treatment plan and goals.
WEEK TWO: Child Intake Session
During this 45- to 60-minute session, the therapist will interview your child as well as meet with you as the parent(s) to ask any follow-up questions which may be helpful in treatment planning and goal-setting to best meet your child’s needs.
WEEK THREE: Feedback Session
Now that we’ve thoroughly assessed your child’s needs, we will meet with you to discuss the diagnoses, identify starting goals, and provide education on the apparent causes and factors which are leading to your child’s troubling thoughts and behaviors.
WEEK FOUR and Beyond: Child OCD Therapy
At this point, you and your child will attend regular weekly therapy sessions. A typical course of treatment calls for 12 to 16 weeks of therapy sessions, but treatment length depends on many factors and, therefore, could require more or less weeks. Additionally, your therapist may determine that you need to come more or less frequently, depending upon your child’s presenting symptoms.
Together, in each subsequent session, your child and their therapist will use evidence-based psychotherapy models to help your child learn to identify and address the challenges they experience because of OCD. This typically includes the integration of techniques from Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP), Behavioral Parent Training (BPT), or other evidence-based modalities.
Each session is designed to help your child learn to control bothersome thoughts and behaviors and better enjoy the world around them.
TERMINATION: The Final Sessions
As your child gets closer to their therapy goals, we will develop a plan for successfully transitioning them into a life without weekly therapy. This often means moving sessions from once a week to every other week, to monthly sessions, or to finishing out services completely. We also work with you and your child to develop a relapse prevention plan at this time. Our goal is for your child to be able to retain what we have worked on together and to implement all they have learned in therapy outside of sessions in their everyday life.
Are we the right providers for you?
Click below to request more info, and we’ll be sure to give you all the details about how we can help you take back control of your life.
More About The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management
As a team of licensed therapists, we are experts at teaching you to make the behavioral choices that get you closer to your goals.
We work from an evidence-based perspective. This means that our job is to help you understand your struggles and provide solutions proven to be very effective. Negative thoughts, distressing feelings, and unhelpful behaviors don’t have to be part of your life, and child OCD therapy at The Center for Anxiety and Behavior Management is about changing the way you think, recognizing how your beliefs are holding you back, becoming informed, seeing the world more accurately, and engaging in behaviors that you won’t regret later.
We make it our mission to help you regain control of your life by providing effective strategies supported by science. We are dedicated to being on top of the most recent knowledge and helping you solve problems based on what the research says is effective. It is our passion to educate you on what is and isn’t working in your life so that you can get back in the driver’s seat and take yourself where you want to go.
Who Benefits Most from OCD Counseling
Therapy for children with OCD is best for those who are tormented by intrusive thoughts and have begun to repeat ritualized behaviors, avoid things in life that once made them happy, and who refuse to try new things because of fear, dread, and/or disgust.
Often, the child with OCD thinks that there is something wrong with them and that is why they can’t feel at peace. OCD counseling can help them to find a sense of mastery and control.
Your child will benefit from OCD therapy if:
- They are experiencing intrusive, bothersome thoughts
- They are engaging in time-consuming, life-intruding ritualized behaviors to cope with uncomfortable feelings
- They struggle to participate in daily activities
- They have trouble falling or staying asleep at night
- They often act out in order to avoid uncomfortable situations
- The child’s behaviors are intruding on the family’s functioning
There are certain situations where your child might not be ready for counseling sessions with us.
These include, but are not limited to :
- Situations where your family’s schedules are too busy to commit to weekly therapy
- Situations where the child or parent does not want to practice the techniques outside of session
- Situations where parents are not committed to the process
- Situations where parents want a quick fix.
If you are currently experiencing any of these issues, we can provide you with appropriate referrals for your level of care.
What Does Therapy for Child OCD Cost?
OCD counseling for children is a fee-for-service program which means that we require payment at the time services are provided. We would be considered an out-of-network provider and would be happy to provide you with receipts which include all of the information you’d need for submitting directly to your insurance company for your own reimbursement.
When and Where are the Counseling Sessions?
Our office is conveniently located at 259 Main Street in Chester, NJ, 07930.
Sessions are currently held by appointment only Monday – Saturday.
Your Next Steps
Your child can absolutely begin to identify the triggering situations and thoughts associated with their OCD.
A calm, relaxed, and engaged child may be a long way off right now, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t learn to cope when things don’t go their way. They just need the support of a caring professional and evidence-based strategies while they figure out how to best manage it all.
Your child will get the tools that they need to be more successful in school and with their friends in addition to being more comfortable at home. And, they’ll also develop more positive self-esteem as they engage in more activities and experience success.
Ultimately, your child will be more carefree and willing to experience what life has to offer. We can help.
Call or text (908) 883-4173 or book an appointment to schedule your 15-minute phone consult to see if we’re a good fit for your child’s OCD needs today!
Our Team
Meet our experienced & professional team
Our therapists’ commitment to providing quality treatment and giving you practical, action-oriented strategies are why we are one of the most sought after mental health practices.
