Shownotes
We hear people say things like, “He’s so OCD” or “I’m so OCD” all the time. But what does OCD actually look like in a child? And how can you tell when your child simply likes things a certain way versus when their behavior might be driven by something more serious?
In this episode of Educated Parent, I’m joined by psychologist Dr. Chad Brandt, who specializes in treating severe OCD in children and adolescents. Dr. Brandt is trained in the Bergen four-day treatment for OCD and has been providing full-day intensive treatment since 2020. We talk about how ordinary routines and repetitive behavior can differ from OCD, the warning signs parents should pay attention to, and why understanding parenting and child development can help us avoid both over-pathologizing normal behavior and overlooking a child who needs support. It’s exactly the kind of nuanced conversation I want more parenting podcasts to have.
In this episode, we cover:
- What OCD in children actually looks like and how obsessions, compulsions, fear, and interference with daily life fit together
- How to distinguish normal childhood preferences and repetitive behavior from rituals that are driven by anxiety or fear
- Why Dr. Chad Brandt looks at how much time OCD consumes when considering the severity of a child's symptoms
- How letting children experience manageable discomfort instead of immediately fixing it connects parenting and child development with building confidence and resilience
If you're sorting through repetitive behavior and wondering whether it's simply part of your child's personality or could be OCD in children, this conversation with Dr. Chad Brandt can help you know what to watch for and when to seek an expert evaluation. Among parenting podcasts, I hope Educated Parent can give you the evidence-based information you need to feel more confident navigating parenting and child development when your child is struggling.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
International OCD Foundation Website
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Transcripts
[00:00:00] Leah Clionsky: Welcome to The Educated Parent podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Leah Klionsky, and I am so excited to talk about those times where we aren't sure whether we're seeing a challenging behavior or whether we're seeing something that is actually potentially obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. Sometimes when our kids are acting up, we don't know exactly why, and that's why I brought Dr.
[00:00:30] Leah Clionsky: Chad Brant on the show. So Dr. Brant is a psychologist. He trained in the Bergen four-day treatment for OCD, and he's been operating his own practice specializing in full-day intensive treatment sessions since 2020. He's helped dozens of families of young children and adolescents move on from the confines of severe OCD symptoms.
[00:00:52] Leah Clionsky: So he's the guy to see if your kids are really struggling with OCD and it's making it so they can't live their lives. So that's why he's the perfect person to discuss this topic. Thank you so much for being on the show, Dr. Chad.
[00:01:05] Dr. Chad Brandt: Hi, Leah. Thank you very much for having me
[00:01:08] Leah Clionsky: Yeah, this is so exciting. Um, I think that OCD has an interesting title in our culture.
[00:01:14] Leah Clionsky: You know, we say things about people like, "Oh, they, they're so OCD that, you know, I can't even go into their house," or, "I'm so OCD," or, "They're-- my cat's so OCD." And I don't think anyone knows what OCD actually means, and so I was hoping you could share that with us.
[00:01:33] Dr. Chad Brandt: Absolutely happy to start there. Um, so OCD stands for obsessive compulsive disorder. So the O in obsession, um, means a thought that comes back repeatedly that we don't like, that we try to get rid of, uh, usually taboo in nature in some form or fashion. The C stands for compulsion. That's the thing we do to get the thought to go away.
[00:01:53] Dr. Chad Brandt: And the D stands for disorder, which means it impacts your daily functioning, basically. So OCD thoughts that come up that you don't like, you do something to fix them, and that something you're doing is taking up a lot of time. That is different than just liking things a certain way. My wife likes her closet organized like a rainbow, and that's fine.
[00:02:12] Dr. Chad Brandt: Good for her. Happy to do it. She puts her closet away. It takes up ten extra seconds of her day, and she moves on with her life. My closet's an explosion. It costs me ten seconds every day, but that's not really-- That doesn't really matter one way or the other. Um, OCD will take up minutes, hours, days, weeks, months of time, and it's always a fear-based disorder.
[00:02:32] Dr. Chad Brandt: So I like to give an example for young families. Kids like things a certain way. Kids like routine. Kids like consistency. Kids like structure, right? And your, your child might like his, his, his steady bear, his teddy bears lined up, particularly from smallest to biggest on his bed when he leaves for school every day.
[00:02:47] Dr. Chad Brandt: That would be just fine. He says he likes the small ones in the front. Who cares? What it would... It would start to become a problem if he started to take extra time, and I have to organize them just right, and I have to turn them a certain way, so on and so forth. Now, if your kid does that and, and can break from it, or if you can switch the teddy bears around and he doesn't notice, or you can make a game out of it and he thinks it's fun, that's just fine.
[00:03:08] Dr. Chad Brandt: What you'll notice is if you take a kid who maybe has some OCD and you switch two of the teddy bears, or you tell him he has to leave the room quicker without perfecting them, he will get scared usually. And he might say, "It doesn't feel right. I feel-- I will feel wrong all day if the teddy bears aren't right.
[00:03:23] Dr. Chad Brandt: Something bad will happen." That would be the obsession, some type of fear in there. The compulsion would then be getting the teddy bears just right. And eventually, if it's allowed to grow and it is OCD, that will take up more and more time in the morning. The kid will be late for school. You'll be yelling.
[00:03:37] Dr. Chad Brandt: They'll be crying. Everything will be a disaster. And then you look at, uh, OCD versus just kinda little kids liking things a certain way.
[00:03:45] Leah Clionsky: I can see why that's really hard though for parents to understand because people do prefer things to be a certain way. You know, like, yeah, like my son loves, uh, like his little Lion King figures and he wants to play with them a certain way and, you know, he can get mad if you want to shift the game into something else.
[00:04:04] Leah Clionsky: And so like looking at that behavior, you know, it could be very easy to over-pathologize. What over-pathologize means for the audience is when you diagnose something as disordered when it's not, it's just how people are, right? So it could be easy to say, "Whoa, this is OCD, and now I'm freaking out about this."
[00:04:24] Leah Clionsky: Or it could be easy to like for there to be really an impairing problem and then for us to dismiss it, and I think that is one of the hard things about being a parent in general is figuring out is this serious enough for me to worry about or is this just like somebody's individual personality quirk or maybe something cute about them?
[00:04:44] Dr. Chad Brandt: Yeah. No, that's a really good, that's a really good question, and I'll encourage parents if, if they're not sure, if I catch them in the very, very early stages of exploring for OCD, to try to make a game out of it. Um, so for, for example, um, "The Lion King" example would be great, and you, you play Lion King for five minutes and you use the certain figures, and then you say, "Well, I also really love, um, Moana," and the little pig from Moana, I forget his name right now, he wants to wander in and be friends with Pumbaa.
[00:05:12] Dr. Chad Brandt: And ideally, your child's able to say, "Oh boy, we can add a new, new friend. This is fun. Let's do it." Um, or they might be able to say, "No, Mommy, I don't like that today. Maybe tomorrow." Or you can say, "Okay, we won't involve the pig today. Maybe tomorrow." There'll, there'll be some flexibility even if you have to work a little bit at it.
[00:05:29] Dr. Chad Brandt: Um, and again, where you would see OCD as like a big, big break, a big shift, a big meltdown. "No, no, no. It's not right. It can't be that way. He lives over here. No, no," tears, right? Worries, fears coming out of that would be one of the ways to differentiate it. Uh, my, my daughter leading up to Easter wanted only bunnies in her bed.
[00:05:48] Dr. Chad Brandt: Um, and my, my daughter does many things like that, and I do over-pathologize all of my three children with all things all the time because I'm a psychologist so I was sneaking extra animals onto the bed, um, you know, every night just to see, just to, just to poke at her a little bit. Um, and she didn't like it very much until two or three days in, we made it a game, and it was hide the new creature, and, and, and, and after two or three days it was fun, and she said, you know, "Daddy, where's the chicken?"
[00:06:15] Dr. Chad Brandt: And we could, we could add, we could expand it, turned into a game. That to me is not OCD. That's just fun. That's kids liking things a certain way, and you teaching a little bit of flexibility. Very different than the, the meltdowns or the anger, um, that you might see.
[00:06:28] Leah Clionsky: Right? There's a difference between liking something and feeling actually scared if that thing doesn't happen. Like, th- that's a totally different level of reaction. It's like I prefer it versus like now I'm terrified that mom and dad will die because there are not just bunnies on my bed.
[00:06:47] Dr. Chad Brandt: Yes. Yes. No, that's exactly right. And if you probe a little bit, little... The littler the kids are, it's, it's harder sometimes to get at the thoughts going on in there. But you will hear something like s- I'm afraid something bad will happen. Um, and sometimes the older kids might be able to say, you know, "You'll die, Daddy, on your way to work in the car."
[00:07:04] Dr. Chad Brandt: Okay, we can work with that. Little guys, my daughter's five, y- might just say, "This feels bad," or, "It makes me worried," or, "Something bad might happen." Um, and, and when you get into those fears or those nonsensical fears, um, that's when you'd wanna kinda take your next layer of exploration, reach out to a professional
[00:07:22] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. I also know too for OCD that parents get really involved sometimes in the rituals that kids do. Can you give some examples of like how you might get sucked into your kid's ritual without even knowing it until it's kind of too late?
[00:07:37] Dr. Chad Brandt: I, I can give you so many examples. Um, so, um, I will say the way I measure severity of OCD is in time consumed. Um, so I might have one patient that is sitting and thinking 12 hours a day. That's a very severe case. That's a lot of time consumed. They can't focus. They can't learn math. They're not playing on the playground, right?
[00:07:58] Dr. Chad Brandt: I might have another kid that washes his hands really aggressively 30 minutes a day. That second kid is gonna have more physical symptoms. Their hands are gonna be raw. They're gonna hurt, right? They-- It's very noticeable for them to be washing, and you might think that's a more severe case. It's not in my mind.
[00:08:13] Dr. Chad Brandt: The time consumed on that first kid is more severe. So what OCD will do is it'll consume the time of the individual that has it. It'll consume the child's time, and once it has enough of the child's time, it'll go for your time. It'll go for the parent's time, right? "Mommy has to say good night to me in exactly this way, and then Daddy has to come in, and he has to kiss me here, and he has to kiss the ba- the bunny there," and da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
[00:08:34] Dr. Chad Brandt: And every night, Mommy has to say good night three times, and Daddy has to do two kisses. And that might go on for a week, and then you'll see it, and then y-y- Mommy, that didn't feel right. Say good night three more times. Daddy kiss me, and then kiss my chicken, and then kiss the bunny. Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.
[00:08:47] Dr. Chad Brandt: You'll see it just kind of slowly grow, and something that starts out kind of fun or kind of quirky. You know, we got this little nighttime ritual. All kids have little nighttime rituals. When it starts to expand, when it starts to get frustrating, when it takes up too much time, or again, when you try to break it, if the kid freaks out, right?
[00:09:04] Dr. Chad Brandt: That, that would be a sign. So like nighttime rituals for younger kids, I see all the time, ones that are just growing. Um, any kind of r- repetitive task, um, eating, uh, stabbing things with a fork, chewing a certain number of times, praying a certain number of times, if that's what your family does. Um, you know, washing your hands before or after meals, before or after using the bathroom.
[00:09:27] Dr. Chad Brandt: You want your kids to do that. Golly, I wish my boys would do that more consistently. Um, but if they do it too long, multiple times, if they do the exact same thing, if you hear them counting, all of those things would be trigger points. Um, anything with numbers. My, my kids like numbers. They like to do things a certain number of time.
[00:09:43] Dr. Chad Brandt: They like counting. They're mathy kids. But if you see a kid flipping a light switch on and off a certain number of times, walking through a doorway a certain number of times, um, anything that where they really get stuck and you can see them repeating, that tends to be worrisome. That tends to indicate something's going on.
[00:10:01] Leah Clionsky: Yeah, I know what's so hard about being a parent in general is that you want to, you want to like make your kids happy, right? Like you want to accommodate, like you're like, "Sure you can have, you know, good night three times." Like, "I love you and I want you to feel good and secure." And it-- by-- Instagram does a really good job, by the way, of making it seem like you're abusive if you don't do exactly what your kids want all the time.
[00:10:27] Leah Clionsky: Like they will be traumatized later and they will have attachment wounds, I feel like how
[00:10:32] Leah Clionsky: Instagram will phrase
[00:10:33] Dr. Chad Brandt: yes, You have to say I love you 79,000 times if they want it, right?
[00:10:38] Leah Clionsky: Right? One time I didn't say I love you the thousandth time, and they were deeply traumatized forever. So like Instagram will make you think that. So you think you're helping, right? You think you are giving your child secure attachment, and then you are accidentally making things worse. And figuring that out later, it's so hard to, as a parent, when you think you're doing something that's useful, and then you find out you have actually become part of the problem, and then you have to change what you were originally doing.
[00:11:10] Leah Clionsky: I think that's one of the agonizing things about being a parent is you sometimes just don't know whether you are part of the problem or the solution, and sometimes you don't find out for a really long time. And it's funny what you can end up, what you can end up doing for a child. I have some funny bedtime rituals I did for my daughter that didn't, did not involve OCD, um, just involved being bad at sleeping as an, as an infant and, you know, and my desperation.
[00:11:37] Leah Clionsky: But, um, like they definitely took up a lot of my time. So it's interesting kind of looking back and trying to figure it out.
[00:11:44] Dr. Chad Brandt: Yeah. It, it, it really is. Um, and, uh, the way that I tend to think about a lot of parenting issues is you want to give them the space. You wanna give them the space to struggle. You wanna give them the space to fail. You wanna give them the space to, to figure it out with a safety net underneath, right? So, like, right before we even got on this call, my, my oldest son sprained his ankle at school.
[00:12:08] Dr. Chad Brandt: He's downstairs. Um, and we have him set up. He's got his little Tylenol. He's got his little ice pack on. He's watching TV. I told him I'm up here. He's okay, right? He's not bleeding. It's not swollen out of, uh, out, out, out, out of his shoe. He's, he, he's okay, right? So there's some space there, and I know he would, to some degree, want me sitting with him, and I did for a bit, and now I'm done, and Daddy's available, and so on and so on and so forth.
[00:12:31] Dr. Chad Brandt: And I, I'll think about OCD in that same way sometimes. "I know you want seven good nights. I do love you. I would love nothing more than to give you 7,000 good nights, but I am a person too, and I need sleep, and you need sleep. We're gonna be grumpy tomorrow if we don't sleep. So I'm giving you six good nights tonight, and that's what I'm doing no matter what.
[00:12:48] Dr. Chad Brandt: I'm-- I love you. I know you're tough. I know you can handle it," right? "I love you, I love you, I love you," whatever, six times, and then you walk out of the room. Um, and you can, you can start to let them struggle a, a, a little bit. There's a lot of love, and there's a lot of support, and there's still, "And we're not doing it exactly the way your brain says you have to have it."
[00:13:06] Dr. Chad Brandt: Um, that's a lot of the work with little kids. How do we, how do we push them without being mean? How do we push them in a way where they feel empowered versus abandoned? Um, because when you've done good night routines for however many years and all of a sudden you have to change it up, it can be hard for the little guys.
[00:13:26] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. It's funny. It's-- When I talk to psy- child psychologists specifically or, like, hang out with my child psychologist friends, we talk about parenting. So much of our conversations are about, like, setting limits and letting kids experience healthy levels of distress without fixing their problems for them.
[00:13:43] Leah Clionsky: And it's such a different, um, viewpoint, I think, than a lot of parents have, but it's because we know that, like, over-overcoddling, not being, you know, not being genuine, supportive, and validating, but overcoddling breeds anxiety. It feeds OCD and anxiety disorders, and it, and it leads to, like, really challenging relationships with your kids.
[00:14:08] Leah Clionsky: And so we-- I feel like we as a group tend to be more into, "It's okay for your kid to have a tough moment, you know, as long as you're there and supportive and a good parent overall." And I think that's how we are almost differentiated sometimes from the culture.
[00:14:22] Dr. Chad Brandt: Yes. Yes. And it's, and it's interesting 'cause it does feel mean maybe sometimes to, to hear it from the outside, but it's really not. There's I love you, I trust you, is what I say a lot. I believe in you, and you can struggle for a bit. I'm here if you need me. When they figure it out and you can tell them they're great, and, and now you've got some real concrete evidence that you're great, right?
[00:14:40] Dr. Chad Brandt: You did something hard. I'm really proud of you. Instead of you're just great for existing, which they are, sure. Um, but there's a, there's something you did. There's a struggle you worked through that can be really helpful
[00:14:51] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. Well, doing hard things successfully is what builds confidence. Not, again, not mean things, not like w- you're, you're desperately injured, you've twisted your ankle, I'm gonna leave you on the driveway to cry, right?
[00:15:03] Dr. Chad Brandt: We're all inside when you're better, yes.
[00:15:06] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. Yeah. You can crawl your way in. It's not like that, but it's saying like, "I trust you," like, "I believe you can hang out for 30 minutes as a 10-year-old while I do something else, and then I'm gonna be so proud of you, and you're gonna know you're capable."
[00:15:21] Leah Clionsky: That is a different kind of parenting
[00:15:24] Dr. Chad Brandt: Yes. Yes. And, and, and to bring it back into OCD, that's what OCD will kind of pull away. Um, and, and, and the kid will start to say, you know, "I, I can't," or, "I'm, I'm scared." Um, and when you hear your kid say you're scared, you've got this natural instinct, right? To, to run in there, to jump, to fix, you know, to control, to tell them it's okay.
[00:15:43] Dr. Chad Brandt: Um, and OCD just loves that. OCD just eats that up. OCD just feeds and feeds and feeds off of this. You get into these cycles as a parent where you're doing all these things, and you kinda in the back of your mind know it's, it's, it's abnormal or it's not right or it's not helping. But the second you try to back off, the kid's in tears saying, "I'm so scared, I'm so scared."
[00:16:00] Dr. Chad Brandt: What are you supposed to do?
[00:16:03] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. It's a, it's a really good trap. It's a, just sucks you right in along with your child, and you're the only one who can pull out of it when you have a young kid. It has to come from parents
[00:16:14] Dr. Chad Brandt: Yes. Yes. It's a lot of parent training
[00:16:18] Leah Clionsky: So if we were to give parents three quick signs to say to them, "Hey, this is concerning enough where you should actually get an evaluation to see if OCD could be part of what's going on," what would be your top three things that parents would know, "Okay, like I, I'm worried enough where this is going to cause me to get an expert to tell me
[00:16:42] Dr. Chad Brandt: I should call someone. Yes. Yeah. So I will start by, um, outlining how I think about OCD, and that will lead me into those three things. So I will think about OCD personally when I get a case. I will think of it as like a phobia of uncertainty. I-is one of the ways that I'll think about OCD, especially in kids.
[00:17:03] Dr. Chad Brandt: You get a little bit older, you get that kind of phobia of thoughts, stuff going on, all these terrible intrusive thoughts. If you're dealing with a six, eight, 10-year-old, usually they're not having those, those terrible thoughts they haven't been exposed to enough. Sometimes they do, not, not super frequently.
[00:17:16] Dr. Chad Brandt: But if you think of them as like a phobia of uncertainty, that would be your, your, your pushing point there. Um, so when I mentioned like changing a game, changing a routine, right? If, if my daughter wants all bunnies and I put a pig on the bed, um, she might just say, "I don't like that," or, "I don't want pigs today," or something like that.
[00:17:36] Dr. Chad Brandt: And if, and, and, and if I can say, "Well, let's have a pig tomorrow," or, "Let's put the pig on the bed and see if they're friends," or, "Let's have the pig on here for five minutes and then I'll take him off," usually she's able, a non-OCD kid is able to say, "Oh, okay, I can do that. That sounds like fun. I'll test this out with you," right?
[00:17:50] Dr. Chad Brandt: And they'll roll with it. You'll hear language from a kid with OCD that says, "I, I can't tolerate that. I don't know what will happen." Right? What if da, da, da, da, da, da, da? What if something bad happens? What if, what if somebody gets hurt? What if the pig hurts the sheep? I don't know. It could be, could be anything going on there.
[00:18:06] Dr. Chad Brandt: But you'll hear this, um, this uncertainty intolerance going on. "I don't know what will happen if you do that, and therefore I won't allow it." Right? "Mommy, I don't know what will happen if you don't say good night seven times, so you have to say good night seven times." You got an uncertainty there. So step one, or one of the ways to probe there would be to push on them a little bit.
[00:18:25] Dr. Chad Brandt: Let's try to mix it up, um, and just see how they react. If they can make a game out of it, if they can do it even the next day, that's fine. If they get real stuck on, "But what if something bad happens?" you've, you have got a problem there. Um, the second way you could tell the difference, um, would be the kids saying they like it versus the kids saying they don't like it.
[00:18:44] Dr. Chad Brandt: Um, my middle son, I'll keep using my kids as examples, um, loves to play basketball. He goes outside and he shoots basketballs all the time, right? And he likes to have his last shot be a make. Now he's eight, and he likes to shoot the big ball in the big hoop, so many of the shots don't go in. And, and, and, and, and I'll tell him, "You have one minute for dinner, and then you have to come in."
[00:19:03] Dr. Chad Brandt: And I'll give him his time, and if I come back a minute later and he says, "I haven't made a shot," and I say, "Well, I'm sorry, buddy, you still gotta come inside. I told you a minute. It's dinner time," he should be able to come inside. He might not like it. He might drop the ball and kind of huff and puff and go inside, but he can do it.
[00:19:16] Dr. Chad Brandt: Now, if he were to have a total meltdown, right? Or if I were to grab him or take the ball and say, "Okay, it's dinner time. Come on inside," and he were to just scream and yell, just this way oversized reaction to that not rightness, to that uncertainty, that would be a warning sign there too. Every kid wants to finish the game how they want to finish, and they should be able to break it however you say with enough warning, right?
[00:19:39] Dr. Chad Brandt: Um, so that would be a warning sign too, if you break it up, if you get these outsized anxious reactions. Sometimes you'll see the anger. Usually there's anxiety under the anger. Why are you so angry? Well, because if I don't make this last shot, then I'll miss every shot in the game this weekend. Ah, okay. Uh, that's, that's a big scary outcome here that doesn't make a lot of sense.
[00:19:58] Dr. Chad Brandt: And so that would lead me actually into the third way you can differentiate. The thing that makes OCD different than worry, um, is OCD gets magical at some point, and that is a technical term that I'll use all the time right there. To wanna finish your last shot 'cause you like making shots, that makes sense.
[00:20:14] Dr. Chad Brandt: All right, to wanna finish your last shot because you got a game this weekend, that makes sense. To wanna finish your last shot so that next weekend you do a good job, ooh, okay. That's, that's a little weird. That's a little magical. That's a little nonsensical. To wanna finish this last shot so daddy doesn't get in a car accident tomorrow.
[00:20:29] Dr. Chad Brandt: Ooh, okay, that's a little magical, right? Your basketball doesn't impact my driving as far as I've ever seen anyway, right? To wanna make this last shot so that grandma s- is, is, stays alive so that God loves me tomorrow. Any of those things, right? When you get magical, that would be, that would be a signal there that that's, that might be OCD
[00:20:49] Leah Clionsky: Right. And then you want to get it evaluated because maybe they were just mad at you that day, right? Or maybe they saw something on TV or, you know, maybe it's a passing, it's a passing idea, right? Because things are very uncertain right now, and it will go
[00:21:04] Leah Clionsky: away. But if you're seeing those things and you're starting to wonder, it doesn't hurt to meet with an OCD expert and just have that differentiated so that there can be a more in-depth assessment.
[00:21:16] Leah Clionsky: You can figure out like, "Hey, is this really OCD or is this one of these things where you've never set a limit with your child?" And so when you say that was the last minute and, and they're like, "I want more time to play basketball," they push back and it has nothing to do with fear. So that's where it's helpful to just get those things differentiated.
[00:21:35] Leah Clionsky: And you want to do it from someone who's actually an expert in OCD, someone who knows, um, exposure and response prevention, somebody who's really been trained in that modality because it's important to know so that you can get treatment for something before it escalates.
[00:21:51] Dr. Chad Brandt: Yeah. So, so OCD will worsen over time without treatment almost universally. Um, and it can get very, very, very debilitating. So that's how I've built my whole practice is just around severe cases of OCD. Um, and you do-- if you have a sense of it, you would want to get it assessed. It can, it... Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Oh, goodness.
[00:22:14] Dr. Chad Brandt: We made it almost all the way.
[00:22:15] Leah Clionsky: Oh, Chad, you did com- you completely broke up. So can you say what you just said again about like how it will worsen without treatment and how that's your practice?
[00:22:26] Dr. Chad Brandt: Okay. Okay. Um, so that's that, uh... Three, two, one. Uh, so that's the way I've designed my entire practice is around treating severe cases of OCD because OCD can become so severe so quickly. It can impact so much even in very young children. Um, and when, when you have an inkling, uh, an indication that OCD might be what's coming on, you do want to push on that and, and, and, and you wanna get an evaluation for that.
[00:22:56] Dr. Chad Brandt: You wanna get it worked on. The, the treatment can be very, very, very effective, um, and it can be helpful very quickly, and there's a lot of tools that we can give you as a parent to work on that. A lot of times I actually don't even work with the kids. I-I'll just work with the parents and give them the language and them the tools to push on it.
[00:23:14] Dr. Chad Brandt: Sometimes I don't meet the kid at all. Um, but you do wanna, you do wanna push on that
[00:23:20] Leah Clionsky: Yeah, I think that's such a helpful message though that's hopeful. Like anxiety disorders, very treatable with an evidence-based treatment. Behavioral disorders, very treatable with an evidence-based treatment. Like when people get an oppositional defiant disorder diagnosis and parents are so worried about it, I say, "Oh, don't worry.
[00:23:39] Leah Clionsky: This is just symptoms. We can absolutely treat this. This can go away." And so I think people often don't get effective treatment, and so they think that treatment doesn't work. But there are really effective evidence-based treatments, and you want the right thing if there's a problem and you want to address it early before it gets worse.
[00:23:59] Leah Clionsky: So you don't have to feel like
[00:24:02] Dr. Chad Brandt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, and, and I can talk about how to find that as well, um, because there, there's no overarching governing body of OCD therapists, and, and anybody can put on their website they, they do OCD, right? So there's a couple ways that you can differentiate that, um, for, for parents that are worried.
[00:24:20] Dr. Chad Brandt: One is you can go to the International OCD Foundation website, www.iocdf.org. Um, it's all about OCD signs and symptoms. They've got a find a therapist tool on there, um, nationally, so you can find somebody around you hopefully. Um, anybody that is listening to this can call me or shoot me an email. Um, I'm a part of SYPACT, so I'm licensed in s- 40 some odd states.
[00:24:44] Dr. Chad Brandt: Um, and, and even if you don't want to work with me, or I, I can't work with you or what have you, I, I'm pretty well connected. I can probably point you in the right direction, um, for somebody around you if you want. So those are two options people at home have. Um, the third thing I'm gonna say is when you find a therapist and you get into therapy, um, and Leah, you mentioned this a minute ago, the therapy should be exposure and response prevention.
[00:25:06] Dr. Chad Brandt: That is the gold standard of treatment for OCD. There really is no other treatment that is going to be effective or nearly as effective, um, as ERP. So if I'm working with a child, uh, my job is to get with that child and to start to push them, to start to push them into uncertainties to, to, to start to help them test or challenge some of these anxieties, some of these fears.
[00:25:29] Dr. Chad Brandt: If I'm just working with the parents, my job-- Oh no
[00:25:31] Leah Clionsky: you're breaking up again
[00:25:36] Dr. Chad Brandt: Probably. We, we were, we were like so close
[00:25:50] Leah Clionsky: So I know when you start working with kids, your goal is to get in with them and start to really push and test and challenge some of these difficult situations, start to push on some of these fears and these thoughts so that
[00:26:05] Dr. Chad Brandt: I've got you now. I'm sorry. Sorry. Now I'm back. I can hear you now. Sorry. Golly
[00:26:14] Leah Clionsky: Now it's really breaking up a lot. Can you check your
[00:26:17] Dr. Chad Brandt: Oh, man. Yeah, I'm turning off all the other things around me
[00:26:24] Leah Clionsky: I'm like, "We almost got there."
[00:26:39] Dr. Chad Brandt: Okay. I've got... Does that help?
[00:26:43] Leah Clionsky: Okay. I can't see you move, but I can hear you now. So the part that didn't... There we go. So the part that didn't record is when you were saying like, "I wanna push on all of these things," and then I lost you completely.
[00:26:57] Dr. Chad Brandt: Golly.
[00:26:57] Leah Clionsky: someone's in therapy with me, I like to push on all of these different-"
[00:27:01] Dr. Chad Brandt: Okay, okay, okay. So I can, I can start. Where, where, where, what should I say? Where should I start? 'Cause I was going for a while before it all died.
[00:27:10] Leah Clionsky: So you were saying when someone's in there, we're-- you said that ERP is the gold standard, that you need to be in ERP, and then you started to talk very slightly about ERP, what it was, and like how you're gonna push back on all of those different
[00:27:23] Dr. Chad Brandt: Got it. All right, well, let's try it here. Here we go. Okay, and then three, two, one. Um, so exposure with response prevention is the gold standard of treatment for OCD. It's what you should find. Um, it is by far the most effective treatment, um, for OCD. What exposure and response prevention, ERP, w-what it is, is it's, uh, exercises direction in challenging the OCD exposure and then response prevention, not doing the thing that makes you feel better, right?
[00:27:53] Dr. Chad Brandt: So if I'm working with a kid, um, I will help them do their exposures. I would say, "Well, you're afraid of germs. Let's go outside. Let's touch some dirt. Let's do whatever. Let's throw a basketball around." Usually with a kid, you wanna make it a little bit fun. There has to be a reason to do it, right? And then we're gonna go inside, and we're not gonna wash our hands.
[00:28:09] Dr. Chad Brandt: We're gonna play with our toys. We're gonna do something else. We're gonna push on the OCD. We're gonna send that message into ourselves that says, "We can be uncomfortable, and we can move forward." Golly. Okay. Did that, did that die too?
[00:28:23] Leah Clionsky: No, it mostly was there. Yeah. This idea of we can be uncomfortable and we can
[00:28:27] Dr. Chad Brandt: will do
[00:28:28] Leah Clionsky: Yep, and I will attach all of Chad's, um, links in the, in the-- Sorry, I need to talk again. All right, I will try again. So we're gonna have all of these links in the show notes, um, in addition to that website that Dr.
[00:28:44] Leah Clionsky: Brant mentioned all about, um, how you can look up therapists with actual training in ERP. And it's also a good question to ask if you're meeting with someone and they say, "Oh, I help with OCD," you're like, "Tell me your treatment modality." And if they do not say ERP, then find a new therapist because you want someone who's really trained and certified in something that's gonna make things better for you.
[00:29:08] Leah Clionsky: All right. Dr. Brant, I am so excited to have you on the show. I appreciate all of your thoughts and your wisdom so much.
[00:29:16] Dr. Chad Brandt: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:29:19] Leah Clionsky: All right
