As parents one thing we are still learning about PANDAS is how much control to give our daughter over her obsessions and compulsions. We have gone back and forth on this and quickly realized there is a delicate line between being supportive and enabling.
From the beginning our daughter has obsessed with perfecting her routines, most specifically around getting ready in the morning. She will agonize over making potential changes no matter how small. Everything will be fine tuned and seem to be working well for awhile, but then the obsession creeps back in causing her to doubt it all.
Over the last several weeks she has been wanting to create videos of herself, somewhat like a diary, but has had a hard time coming up with ideas of what to talk about. As a way of brainstorming she went to YouTube to see what videos other girls her age had created. She stumbled across a series of videos where girls explain their morning routines. This of course greatly inspired her to once again tweak her own, but before making any decisions she wanted to watch more (and more, and more) videos.
I have been torn over whether or not to allow her to continue this 'research'. On one hand I think it is good that she sees that everyone's routines are different, and the girls do tend to share it cannot always be the same everyday and stress flexibility in them. However, I am also worried about the obvious...that the obsessive part of her mind will not hear any of those points at all; focusing solely on her own perfection.
Any thoughts....?
