Parent guidance and family support

Helping your child resist OCD

Parent guidance gives you understanding and practical tools for helping your child work with OCD at home. We guide you in using exposure and response prevention (ERP) with your child, so they can gradually become better able to resist OCD’s demands and break out of the OCD cycle.

The consultations are with you as parents, without your child present. We discuss the situations you need help with, including your own worries about how to support your child. With your agreement, we sometimes involve your child so we can work on a particular difficulty together.

Understanding OCD in your family

When your child is frightened or stuck, it is natural to try to bring calm. You may answer the same question many times, help with a ritual or change a family routine to avoid a difficult situation. Over time, these responses can become rules that the whole family has to work around.

The adjustments a family makes to OCD’s demands are known as family accommodation. They often develop through efforts to comfort your child or get through a difficult moment. This does not mean that you have done anything wrong.

We look closely at these situations to develop a shared understanding of your child’s OCD. Recognising how reassurance, rituals and avoidance affect everyday life gives us a starting point for deciding what to work on and where you need more support.

Working with ERP at home

We plan the work around situations from your child’s daily life. These might involve getting ready in the morning, meals, bedtime or activities in your free time. Taking a particular situation, we work out what your child can practise and how you can help them resist OCD.

The psychologist helps you prepare for this work and shows you how to support your child with patience and kindness. We agree on manageable steps, taking account of your child’s needs and what you have the capacity to take on as parents.

You practise the agreed steps with your child between consultations. In the following consultations, we go through what happened, work through difficulties and adjust the approach where needed. Your involvement makes it possible to bring the work into everyday situations, with ongoing guidance from the psychologist. The pace and order of changes are adapted to what both your child and your family can manage.