Ask Dr. Chansky and Dr. Wagner

January 4, 2010

My son, , is 14 yrs old. He has bad thoughts ocd that has been very

manageable the past few years and he has not needed medication, though he is on

many vitamin supplements and has been in therapy off and on for 8 years. His

therapists have not been able to help me with this concern.

His ocd came briefly at age 6 and then again strongly at age 10. He has bad

thoughts ocd only and of course the compulsion to tell his thoughts.

Over Christmas vacation, he was struggling some and said the thought that keeps

coming into his mind is that he wants to be spanked. He says he knows he

doesn't want someone to spank him but he thinks that maybe he wants to be

spanked. I believe this comes from a time when he was 4 yrs old. is my

oldest and like most first born, he was a very well behaved little boy and was

hardly disciplined more than a time out or two. However, when he turned 4, he

started lying alot -- as in all the time and it seemed to come out of the blue.

After talking to him and the normal course of action, I lost it one day and I

spanked the heck out of him and made him throw away his favorite toy -- right

into the dumpster. I think about this now and realize it was abuse by how hard

and how many times I spanked him and though he was spanked only on his bottoms,

I did leave a bruise. You see, my father was a compulsive lier and seeing it in

my young son just flooded back memories of my entire life and I lost it. Please

know I would give anything to change that day ... and my son has never been

spanked since and we are very close. When we lived in TN, they still paddled in

the schools and he also said that when we were there, he would think that he

kind of wished he would do something and be paddled.

My brother in law also suffers from ocd and my son's thoughts are a mirror image

of his, so I don't think that spanking is the cause of his ocd but I certainly

think it may have triggered something. I think now of a little boy being so

confused as to why his mom suddenly few into a rage and was spanking him over

and over and how he must have felt inside -- or maybe he somehow associated that

spanking with attention or love (I'm reaching here!) and I feel like his

thoughts now (regarding spanking) go back to that day.

Do you have any feelings on this of what I could say or do to help explain to

him why he might feel this way. Do you have any suggestions on how to help him

get over this? Is this something that we could make loop tapes of? Other than

this, he is relatively asympomatic. This is not taking over his life but I hate

that he has these thoughts and of course, have tremendous guilt that I am

responsible.

Thanks for any help you may offer.

Kind Regards,

Ward

Recommended Posts