I Want to Advocate for my Child

Millions of children live with anxiety and/or OCD. Given these large numbers, and the disabling nature of these disorders, it would make sense for schools to be aware of them. In an ideal world, all teachers would be fully aware of what anxiety/OCD look like and how to effectively assist their students who live with them. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case.

No one would question that schools want to be of the utmost help to all their students. The problem is that despite the advances made over the last several decades in raising awareness of mental health conditions like anxiety and OCD, there is still a great gap to be filled. Teachers and school counselors are overburdened, and most do not receive any specialized training on how to work with children with anxiety/OCD.  As a result, you will likely need to do a lot of advocating for your child to make sure their school staff understand what it means to have anxiety/OCD, how it is affecting your child’s school work, and what they as school staff can do to help.