What's up with OCD?

Monkey4, 2yo, is obsessive compulsive - in the cutest way of course. The child cannot STAND for any buckle to be unbuckled. If you come into our home, you will see that every buckle is buckled - the buckle on the car seat, the buckle on the swing, the bouncy seat, the high chair.... if anything has a buckle, that buckle is closed.

This is a compulsion with her - it really REALLY bothers her if a buckle isn't closed. We were at Soccer last week and one of the moms had her son's car seat sitting on the ground next to her. Monkey4 noticed immediately that the buckle was not buckled. She knew it wasn't our car seat, and thus she did not feel free to close the buckle, but she kept going over to look and see if it was still unbuckled. She would just stand there staring at it and trying to decide if she dared try to close the lady's car seat buckle. Then she would walk away for a minute and play ball or watch the other children, and then come back to the car seat. It really bothered her profoundly that it was unbuckled [all is NOT right in the Universe! LOL!]. I watched her for a little bit and then I told the other mom what was going on, so she pulled the car seat towards her and kind of under her Soccer Mom Chair. It still bothered Monkey4 because she *knew* it was there all unbuckled, but it helped her not to be able to see it. She was able to move on to other things.

She also has a thing with doors too - every door must be closed. [You know how cats always want every door open? Well, Monkey4 is the Anti-Cat! All doors must be shut, without exception].

She went through a phase of being obsessive about her hands and them being clean [as in totally freaking out if her hands were dirty even the tiniest bit] but now she is starting to get over that a little. She can wash her own hands now [which she does pretty frequently] and that seems to have helped her.