Typical Learning Problems for OCD Students
Beyond the many difficulties often involved with just getting a child with OCD dressed and ready for school in the morning, once she's at school, her OCD can make academic success extremely challenging. Students react in different ways to these challenges.
Some are able to keep their OCD hidden during the school day, performing well in the classroom and working around fears related to coming into physical contact with their peers and the school environment, only to emotionally collapse from the stress of all that effort once they get home. More typically, students with untreated OCD tend to get bogged down at school by the same obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions that affect them at home.
Her need to have things “just so” can make your child's schoolwork go slowly or stop altogether. She can bring OCD-related problems that began at home into the school setting. If, for example, she stayed up late worrying about something or someone she may encounter the next day in the classroom, or if food issues have kept her from eating proper meals, she may be too tired or hungry to perform at school.
In another common occurrence for the student with OCD, her exaggerated fears about harm coming to those she loves can become inappropriately attached to how well she does on a test, causing her to perform rituals to stave off that outcome. In the process she may become distracted from test taking, ensuring the very outcome she dreads.
Contamination Fears at School
Whereas a youngster may believe she has some power to avoid contamination at home, she's likely to be cognizant of the fact that germs or other sources of contamination at school are beyond any semblance of her control. All this can trigger her OCD and make the stress of a typical school day feel overwhelming. Contamination fears can disrupt class in many ways, including:
Janice stayed up until 3
A.M. worrying about whether the boy who sits in front of her in homeroom would push his chair back into her desk, releasing germs from his unwashed hair onto Janice's desk and person.Twelve-year-old Steven was unable to sit still at his desk. He kept turning around to rummage through his backpack in order to check whether he'd brought his clean uniform for gym class, lest he be forced to borrow unfamiliar and potentially contaminated gym shorts.
Stasi, 14, became distraught and distracted when she felt the need to urinate in the middle of her third-period math class, since her fear of using the girls' restroom would make it necessary for her to “hold it in” for the remainder of the school day.
Many parents observe that their child's OCD symptoms become more acute as stress at school increases. It may peak at the beginning of the school year, and reoccur after winter or spring breaks. Added stress also comes with tests and grading periods, or it can result from social pressures from other students.
Tonight my fifteen-year-old son wanted to get a head start on studying for a history final on Friday, to help him feel more in control tomorrow, and more prepared for the in-class review. Not fifteen minutes into it he began panicking again and just couldn't pull himself out. He had another panic attack. I convinced him to come with me in the car (I had to pick up my husband at the train station), and by the time the drive was over and the cold air blowing in his face he had started breathing again and the attack passed. This was just terrible to witness. He kept saying he couldn't breathe and he can never go back to school. I dread tomorrow morning. I don't know how I'm going to get him there. As a mom you just want to protect your kid, but it's so hard to protect them from themselves.
When he suffers from OCD-related obsessions about schoolwork having to be perfect, a youngster can be set off into states of panic. The same fears can cause the student to sabotage his test or assignment or go to great lengths to avoid the situation by refusing to go to school at all.
