YBOCS

[Guest guest]

Thanks, . That makes sense about the blinking.

YBOCS is the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. It's used to rate the

severity of a person's ocd. Several pages of questions which are then analyzed

by the therapist to give you a 'score'. A few pages of it are included in the

back of Chansky's book, " Freeing your child of OCD " .

I think that's awful that the therapist wouldn't have explained ocd to your son.

The explanation is what saved my dd. When she first told me about this 'voice'

in her head, she was more upset than I'd ever seen her. She really thought she

was going insane. She said she wanted to smash her head against the wall to get

the voice out. Really scared me. Chansky's book was recommended to me and I'm

so glad I bought it. The first couple of chapters deal with how to explain ocd

to your child in age-appropriate language. There are even pictures that show

'junk mail' getting caught in the 'net' of your mind and portray ocd as a fat

monster eating chips. Every time you do what he says, it's the same as giving

him another chip, which makes him fatter and stronger. What you need to do is

starve him. The book also gives stats as to how many children have ocd. All of

this helped my dd tremendously. The 'knowledge is power' thing. And she didn't

feel alone, like she was the only weirdo who had this thing.

Our local Family Clinic had a very long waiting list. So we went private. It's

pricey, but well worth it, I think. And it won't be an ongoing expense. The

doctor is thinking probably 15 weeks at most. She sees her once/week, $150 a

session. I know that finding a child therapist experienced with cbt/erp is

usually very difficult. Maybe one of the therapists at the clinic you're going

to now, also has a private practice. That's the story with our therapist.

Mo

----- Original Message -----

From: heather Kashino

I think the blinking thing is like nail biting. We do it even when we

aren't actually thinking about stressful topics it is just b/c of

general anxiety. Both my sons used to do the blink thing and it just

went away after awhile . I ignored it. My son used to do a clear your

throat thing...same idea...went away.

What is YBOC. Our therapist isn't doing much. Says that ds is not

ready to let go of the core contamination thought. Only seeing him

ever two weeks. Seems to go on a lot of holidays. This is through the

Ministry of Children and is free. I am thinking of going private but

I want my ds on board for this.

They haven't even explained to him what ocd is. How it works. I just

find that appalling.