The Humor in OCD

At about 13 months of age I started to wonder if Ry has a touch of OCD. What triggered it was her constant need to arrange all the shoes, dolls, clothes, toys, books, and whatever else intrigued her, into neat and orderly rows. What really pushes me towards that thought is her inability to let something that isn't "right" go. For instance, at the ripe old age of 18 months, she zipped up the door to her tent and started to walk away. She got about 10 steps away, gasped, turned around, went straight back to the zipper and "fixed" it. By fix I mean the zipper was stuck facing up instead of laying down flat. Once she corrected it, she could continue with her playing.

Since then, I have learned to pick my battles with her. I allow her as much independence as she can safely handle, I explain any changes to her schedule as far in advance as possible, and I sure as heck cut the crust off her toast, even though she eats them anyway (thanks Mom for doing that "just for fun").

Now it seems to have spread into how she sees herself. She is having meltdown after meltdown over her clothes! It started with her "hating" the clothes I picked out. Soooooo, I let her pick out her clothes. Then it was getting to take too much time in the morning because she would need to change three or four times times. Soooooo, I have her pick out her clothes the night before. And that was working well, until now.

Now she starts trying on her clothes, for the next day, at night. And the belt is stupid, the jeans are too tight, the dress is ugly, the shirt doesn't match, the socks do match, the heart on her pants is covered by the shirt, etc. This is what she does at night, before bed. Then we repeat the whole thing in the morning.

This morning, she put on jeans and a blue shirt with sparkles. I told her how pretty she looked and I went into the bathroom, asking her to get her shoes on. In the time it took me to blow dry my hair, she had changed in and out of the jeans three times and swapped shirts twice.

We had plenty of time so I just let her do her thing. And when she emerged from the bedroom the final time, she had the sweetest smile, so proud of what she looked like, I couldn't help but kneel down beside her, give her a big hug, and tell her how awesome she is. She is just too funny and I love it.