Thoughts on my DD's obsessive behavior

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Hi Everyone,

I joined the forum because I am still searching for answers about my daughter. She was given a diagnosis of OCD when she was 3 by a psychiatrist. She had this severe obsession with her fingers/toes. She was constantly checking/re-checking her fingers/toes through out the day and asking reassurance questions "Are my fingers going to be ok?" (30 times a minute or more). Our whole day revolved around her fingers/toes. She couldn't wear shoes and that's all she focused on. She had to see them at all times.
The whole thing lasted about 6 months and it still hasn't 100% gone away. She still can't wear closed toe shoes and she will still have meltdowns at pre-k about her toes but not quite as bad as last school year.

I do want to add that since the day she was born I knew something wasn't right. She wasn't like the "normal" babies I'd see. She never smiled, she barely slept, she was extremely colicky and spent pretty much the 1st year of her life screaming. I was always at the Dr. getting her on a new formula. She didn't sleep longer than 4hrs at a time until she was 18 months or so. Even now she is a horrible sleeper. Until about 3 1/2 years old it wasn't uncommon for me to be up with her 10x a night. She would just scream for me all the time.

She also has always had difficult behaviors. She would melt down if I changed my hair style or her grandmother took her glasses off. Then she will repeat "Grandma put your glasses back on" (over and over and over).
Also she has always had terrible separation anxiety since 5 months old.

Another difficult behavior is that despite her dad (we're married) living with us, etc he can never help DD with anything. She screams if he tries to brush her teeth, make her breakfast, etc. She's never let him do anything. Even when she was a tiny tot she'd throw a fit.

I know all toddlers/pre-schoolers are difficult but I have always always felt something was wrong. And then we got the OCD diagnosis and I assumed that was responsible for everything.

But now the older she gets I notice new behaviors and I am not sure they can be explained by OCD.

For the last several months she has picked up an obsession with the littlest petshop. It is the ONLY thing she talks about all day. The first thing out of her mouth is "I love petshops" (and she will repeat this hundreds of times through out the day).. but if you try to ask her about anything else that is NOT petshop related she will get upset.
She will ask other kids what petshops they have and even if they tell her they hate petshops she will still keep pestering them about petshops and she will annoy the kids really bad.
Also if she has no one to play petshops with she will sit and repeat the dialogue from these petshop videos on youtube. She has the whole 10 minute episode memorized.
I can't get her to focus on anything else. If I take her to somewhere special like the zoo, all she will talk about is petshops, etc.

She also repeats questions until they drive you mad. Through therapy we learned how to respond to her reassurance questions with "What do you think, etc". But for example, I will tell her we are going to walmart later and she will repeat "I want to got to walmart" every minute for the next hour. She knows we are going but she keeps saying it! But she does that with most things, the repeating over and over.

Also despite her pediatrician telling me my daughter will grow out of a lot of these behaviors she never has and it only seems to get worse. Like with food, lots of textures bother her. She will only eat 3 or 4 things and she's been this way for as long as I can remember.

Her therapist also pointed out she has a blinking "tic". I guess that might be tied in with the OCD?

Sorry for such a long post. There are so many more things going on with her but I feel I have mentioned the most important.
My big question is, does it sound like just OCD or could her obsessions possibly be AS?

I HIGHLY suspect her dad has aspergers. In fact I would bet my life on it. I didn't even know was AS was until 4 years into our marriage and when I googled it my jaw dropped and I said "That's my husband!".
I don't think it's necessary to go get my husband diagnosed at this point in his life. He is functioning fine. But should I mention my husband has many A/S traits if I get her evaluated?

Also, is it a developmental pediatrician who I need to seek? I refuse to go back to her regular Ped who I should of dumped long ago for many reasons.
I just want to make sure I am on the right path and getting her the help she needs. Ruling out that it's NOT AS would make me feel more confident in her OCD diagnosis.


Thanks for your time.

You would do well to have her evaluated by a developmental pediatrician or pediatric neuropsych.

I can't comment on whether it's AS, but it sounds like more than OCD.

idk it sounds like she has ocd. none of these sounds like she has AS because AS kids don't like other kids and don't talk much. from your description it sounds like she talks a lot. all the behaviors are explained by ocd as far as i can tell. ocd and aspergers are related. it helps to realize that psychiatry is more of an art than a science and that categories of disorders are not absolute or well defined. every person is different. AS really has to do with social interactions specifically, and it would get better as she got older, not worse. ocd would reinforce itself and get worse though.

I don't think she has either. I actually saw a documentary type show (sorry I can't remember the name) it was a british child psychologist who had 4 families come and live in one big house for a week or 2 where she could monitor them as a family and help out with techniques and the children's behaviour.

They had a little boy on their whose behaviours match your daughters almost exactly!! His problem was high levels of anxiety. It turned out that he had picked up on certain behaviours of the mother and exagerrated them over time, she was quite a neat person and need the house to be tidy to feel in control etc etc. ( I know that feeling).

But yeah, maybe anxiety is worth a look?

Sounds like me as a little kid. Sounds like autism to me.