Earlier this summer, I wrote about our daughter's dance with daytime urination syndrome. This was not a fun time in our household and it made going places almost impossible. Fortunately, it passed fairly quickly and we have no problem with it anymore.
Unfortunately, Caelyn has decided to take a whole different route to crazy town. She has what I like to call selective germaphobia. Essentially, when at home and not kept sufficiently busy, she starts worrying about germs on her hands.
She will ask if she touches this or that part of her leg, does she need to wash her hands. After she goes to the bathroom and she touches the door before washing her hands, then touches it again after washing them she will ask if she needs to wash them once more as the germs may have moved from her dirty hands to the door and then back to her clean hands.
She has come up with detailed scenarios in which germs have moved from 4 or 5 locations in order to make it back to her body somewhere. Then her hands will come in contact with that part of her body and she worries that she has to wash them.
We have tried to reassure her that germs don't work that way but she won't listen. Sometimes this ends up with a crying child, a frustrated parent and a trip to timeout. It has gotten really old, really fast.
The funny thing about this is it started suddenly and it almost never happens when she is busy. She can be out playing and never mention it. Yesterday, she spent three hours at a friends and never once asked about washing her hands. Today, we spent almost as long at the pool and again, no worries about germs. But on both occasions, she starts asking about germs as soon as we get home.
Wait a minute, maybe that's the key. Maybe it's not that she thinks about it when she is isn't busy. Maybe, it's just that we should really clean this house. =-)
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