Advice & Support

Sometimes kids can't transfer skills they learn in the office to the home setting because symptoms are stronger there, or only occur there.

The latest thinking on PANDAS aims to broaden criteria beyond strep infections and quell controversy. It succeeds at the former, not the latter.

From inattention to disruptive behavior, many symptoms have multiple causes, leading to mistakes when kids aren't carefully assessed

Kids—usually teenage girls—hurt themselves intentionally to alleviate some other form of pain in their lives. The behavior is hard to comprehend, but understanding plays a big role in treatment.

Children with anxiety disorders like OCD rely on parents to help them avoid what they fear. But cooperation only makes the fear worse. In therapy parents learn to help kids fight back.

From dogs to horses, therapists are using them in new ways to calm, motivate and teach kids with developmental and psychiatric issues.

Kids with OCD are good at hiding their rituals, and these compulsions are even harder to spot when they aren't physical, but mental. They are no less real, however, and just as important for parents to notice.

Symptoms must be very specific and impairing to merit diagnosis, says Dr. Jerry Bubrick. Most likely, the play is just a soothing behavior that strengthens the mother-daughter bond.

Dr. Susan Swedo discusses how obsessive-compulsive disorder can be so prevalent and seemingly invisible at the same time.

Avoiding touching things can be a symptom of OCD—if it's part of a ritual the child performs to prevent something bad from happening.