Expert: Valerie Herskowitz - 7/9/2010

Question
I am very much pleased to know how can I prevent the obsession of my 10-yr-old CWA student with banners and flags so as with my nephew who has also an obsession in letter "A" . The worst thing is that, my student hits himself hard every time he sees a banner/flag but he was prevented to get it.  I was very much challenged by their behavior every time they don't get what they want...Please help me out.. thank you so much..

Answer
HI Ned

I know it's really tough to deal with obsessions as they stem from anxiety. The best way to deal with it is to make the item "disappear" from his sight so it becomes a non-issue. That means trying to avoid him seeing flags and banners for awhile so the obsession has a chance to go away on its own. Eventually, he will probably forget about them if he has no contact with them. The problem, however, will be that unless the anxiety is dealt with directly, he will find another obsession and you are going to be back to square one. So you have to get the family to deal with his anxiety issues directly either through medical or psychological interventions or both. An example: my son was obsessed with candles for awhile. We used to be unable to go into a store and not purchase candles. When he was denied, we had the explosive issues like your student. So one day, we threw out all his candles and stopped taking him to stores for awhile. Eventually, he forgot about candles and we were fine. Now my son takes medication which helps his anxiety quite a bit.

You didn't go into detail about your nephew's obsession with the letter, "A", so if you want to write me back on that one, feel free