Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all
I have a 11 year old autistic daughter. She has been amazing in everything , happy and managed well in school and life in generally. Within the last month she has started to become very obsessed with at first food allergies she has peanut and sesame allergy so this is understandable. But now this seems to have switched to germs and not being clean. She is refusing to touch things, open doors. Instead she is always wanting to wash her hands, crying that she is not clean.
She is transitioning from primary to high school and I understand that there is lots of change in her life. She seems to have coped well at the high school days. But the leavers assembly of primary has just made this germ / cleaning fear off the scale. It feels like its gone for 10 -100 overnight. Hysterically crying, fear of germs going to kill her and us .
She had a school residential and I feel that was the catalyst for this reaction.
Its heart breaking, she has gone from a happy caring girl to sad and isolating herself who cannot be consoled
Really I am look for anyone who has any experience with this , and how they managed. She isn't open to talk about it or rational advice. I really don't want to stress her more with the wrong approaches, It feels I am getting it wrong.
Thank you in advance , any suggestions welcome
I think this is very common fear - and is often categorised as OCD. I think for children that experienced the pandemic at a young age this sort of fear is very unsurprising and totally understandable. Your daughter has lived through a time when not washing hands etc literally could kill people. it’s difficult if she won’t talk to you about it - so I think it’s important to see if you can find ways to make that possible. If I was in your shoes I would do all my research about germ phobia and ocd so that you are familiar with the advice from experts regarding this problem. I think it’s important for your daughter to know that her fears are very normal and very common, and that the pandemic might have influenced her thinking (ie ‘it’s not your ‘fault’ - you’ve experienced a very intense time with the pandemic and for autistic people many aspects of life are experienced more intensely). She’s probably very frightened that this fear of germs is totally overwhelming her - so it’s important for her to know that ocd is highly treatable. If she’s willing you could get a referral from your GP for CBT. If she’s not it’s definitely possible to get books etc and attempt self help - generally this will be slow, graded exposure to the things she fears. Most of all though give her as much reassurance as you can that her fears are common and highly treatable, and that you understand how hard this is for her, but that you are going to be there for 100% while she learns good coping strategies for dealing with her fears. Good luck!