My Sensitive Boy (or My OCD Child)

I have joked for a very long time about Wesley being my little OCD child. When he was just a toddler, he would spend a lot of time lining things up in a particular order. He would get crayons out, use a color, move it to the side of the paper and wouldn't use that crayon again until all the other ones had been used and were in a perfectly straight line.

A lot of his OCD tendencies show themselves in the way he eats. He wants the same thing for breakfast every day and the same thing for lunch every day. There is very little variation. He doesn't like his food to touch and he eats his food in alphabetical order a lot of the time. I joke about OCD, but tell me I'm wrong! 

Today's lunch took his OCD to a whole new level. Wesley told me he wanted peanut butter and jelly for lunch. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he said that. He NEVER eats peanut butter and jelly.  Of course, a couple of minutes later, Wesley was obviously distressed. Turns out that he wanted peanut butter and jelly, but he didn't want the jelly to touch the peanut butter.  I wound up making him two mini sandwiches - one that was just peanut butter and one that was just jelly. He ate both of them (jelly first) and seemed more than satisfied with the solution.

Wesley is also a pretty sensitive kid. He takes things to heart much more than he probably should and he hates to try anything new because he is afraid he won't be good at it. Just getting him to learn to use scissors was no small feat! He gets nervous about amusement park rides and has to watch them carefully to see if they go "too fast" before he'll get on them. And, as most of you know, we have been fighting an ongoing battle about Wesley getting his face wet at the pool. We reached a new low with that today too.

One of the parks near us has a Friday Fun Day today. There was a special storytime by a local celebrity, huge foam blocks to build with, free merry-go-round rides, and waterslides. The waterslides were pretty much inflatable bounce house style slides with the equivalent of a garden hose worth of water going down them at any one time. I talked to the boys before we left the house and they were both pretty excited about going on the waterslides.

When we got to the park, both boys made a beeline for the waterslides. They climbed up the ladder and a moment later, Ryan was flying down the slide on his belly, face first. And Wesley?  Wesley got concerned that his face would get wet and climbed back down the ladder. Never mind that the only way a child could get their face wet was to go down face first. He spent some time watching the other kids on the waterslide and decided to try it again, but the same thing happened. Before long Wesley was actually in tears because he wanted to go down the waterslide but was so worried about getting his face wet that he just couldn't bring himself to do it. Wesley ended up sitting on the grass while Ryan did the slides for a bit, then we rode the merry-go-round and got ice cream. Still a fun morning, but I wish we could have avoided the tears somehow. 

Look out below!

Ready for the next round.

I'm not sure how to help him overcome his fears or his overly cautious nature. I love that he is an empathetic kid, but I worry that his extreme sensitivity is going to cause him problems. At least he isn't shy! Give this kid an audience and he is one happy boy! Future actor perhaps?