Are You Talking to Your Child or Your Child’s OCD?!
AT Parenting Survival | Raising Kids with OCD & Anxiety
Natasha Daniels: Child Therapist, Child Anxiety and OCD Expert, Parenting Coach and Parent
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the hardest parts of raising a child with OCD is figuring out who you’re actually talking to. Is it your child… or is it their OCD pulling you into another loop?
In this episode, we talk about the different ways OCD ropes parents in—whether it’s endless reassurance seeking, constant confessing, permission checking, “just right” demands, or those sneaky checking questions like, “Do I look sick?” or “Is this bad?”
I’ll walk you through how to spot when OCD is taking over the conversation: the circular back-and-forth that goes nowhere, the distress when you don’t answer the “right” way, or the need for more and more clarity tied to their specific OCD themes.
Then we shift into what you can do. We’ll cover how to talk to your child about these patterns ahead of time, how to team up on a plan for responding, and how to use exposures and tools (like reassurance cards) to stop feeding the OCD loop.
And finally, an important reminder: not talking to OCD does not mean ignoring your child. You can still validate, support, connect, and check in, just without fueling compulsions. Pulling yourself out of OCD’s conversations is often one of the first big steps toward real progress.
Links Mentioned in this episode:
PDF handout for this episode: www.natashadaniels.com/handouts
Join my free series: How to Be an Effective Anchor for Your Child’s Anxiety or OCD — www.atparentingsurvivalseries.com
Youtube video: Reassurance can Be a Compulsion
Youtube video: Confessions Can be a Compulsion
Podcast: How to Use Reassurance Cards
***
This podcast episode is sponsored by NOCD. NOCD provides online OCD therapy in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. To schedule your free 15 minute consultation to see if NOCD is a right fit for you and your child, go to
https://go.treatmyocd.com/at_parenting
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be used to replace the guidance of a qualified professional.
Parents, do you need more support?
🌸 Here’s are resources I offer parents 👇🏻❤️
Online classes for parents raising kids with anxiety and OCD:
https://atparentingsurvivalschool.com
Join the AT Parenting Community (A membership designed to support parents raising kids with anxiety or OCD):
https://atparentingcommunity.com
Take one of my FREE webinars:
www.Natashadaniels.com/webinars
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Before you jump into today's episode, I want to talk to you about overwhelm. Do you get overwhelmed |
| 0:06.4 | when your child's anxiety or OCD starts to spiral? I know that I have. Is your child's fear or |
| 0:12.7 | discomfort contagious? It can be. And one of the biggest gifts we can give our child is the skill |
| 0:19.6 | to anchor ourselves. When we learn how to shift |
| 0:23.3 | our mindset out of fear and panic, when we learn how to ground ourselves and calm our nervous system, |
| 0:31.6 | when we learn how to spot our own triggers and we learn how to address them. We become an incredibly effective anchor |
| 0:39.7 | for our kids and their struggles. And honestly, it's not as hard as you might think. I had to |
| 0:46.1 | learn how to navigate incredible life stress, like the sudden passing of my husband a couple |
| 0:50.9 | years ago, along with raising three kids with anxiety, OCD, pots, ADHD, |
| 0:57.2 | RFID, we've got alphabet soup over here. But this has become a daily practice for me. And because of it, |
| 1:04.4 | not only have I felt more calm, I feel healthier, my kids are noticing the remarkable shift as well. And now I'm going to teach |
| 1:13.5 | you these skills. Join me in my free series, how to be an effective anchor for your child with |
| 1:19.2 | anxiety or OCD. You can register at atyparenting survival series.com. All these videos are on demand so you can watch the videos and |
| 1:29.3 | the replay on your schedule while the series is running, which will be January 8th through |
| 1:35.2 | January 16th. I hope to see you over there. Now, back to the show. |
| 1:43.3 | Welcome to the AT Parenting Survival Podcast, where you get help and guidance through the chaos of parenting a child with anxiety or OCD. |
| 1:52.3 | This show is for educational purposes and is not intended to replace the guidance of a qualified professional. |
| 1:58.8 | Here's your host, child therapist, Natasha Daniels. |
| 2:03.2 | Well, hello there, and welcome to another episode of the AT Parenting Survival Podcast. |
| 2:08.4 | Today, I want to talk to you about how you're talking to your child. |
| 2:13.3 | Are you talking to your child? |
| 2:15.8 | Or is it possible you're sometimes talking to your child's OCD? |
... |
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