Confessions - muuuuch better with HA, but afraid my daughter has it too :-(

[Allochka]

Hello ,
Hope everyone is healthy here (I mean, no major organic illnesses :-).
I haven’t posted for a while , and never was too active on this forum to be honest. Just couple of words to re-introduce myself - I have HA for 11 years already, it started after traumatic miscarriage. Had better and worse times since then. Husband had kidney cancer 7 years ago, when I was finally pregnant with our daughter. He is fine now, which proves that cancer doesn’t equal to death sentence. BTW my HA was in complete remission during his treatment - I had real issues to worry about. So if anyone here ever thinks - “ if I am diagnosed, I won’t manage” - believe me, you will handle everything perfectly! :-) Also, his cancer was discovered not thanks to my HA/crazy vigilance, but completely by chance. So HA has no redeeming features and didn’t save any lives, at least in our case :-)
I am on medication for several years already and for last couple of years doing sooooo much better! I even start to react on certain things as non-HA person, which brings me great joy.
BUT… I’ve been noticing some HA traits in our 6 years old daughter. I was always very careful not to project my HA on her - never checked her too much, never dragged her to doctors (well, I did before her 1st birthday, but she definitely doesn’t remember that. But never since then). I admit, I did worry about her health a lot, but kept it to myself.

And now for couple of months she has pronounced teeth related anxiety. She is very emotional, nervous by nature, but previously it rotated around other things and her concerns were rapidly changing, never turning into fixation. But Now it is constantly oral health. Her friend in kindergarten told her that her teeth will rot and fall out. And daughter is histerical now. She checkes her mouth and teeth all the time. She asks 30times per day if her teeth are Ok, constantly asking for reassurance. She visited dentist to get her cavities treated a week ago. But still, even after dentist she is sure that new cavities have formed in a week and teeth would fall out. Today she started to check every bump in mouth and worry this is smth bad (she doesn’t know about cancer/tumors concept yet. So I wonder what does she mean by “bad”…). A nut was stuck to her tooth, and she went crazy thinking this is cavity, saying that this tooth hurts and would fall out…
I am very concerned I passed HA to her somehow or that some kind of anxiety runs in our family. Kicking myself all the time that it is because of me :-(
Does anyone here have similar experience with kids and HA? What did you do? My therapist says 6 year old is too young for proper CBT…
Did you try any therapy or meds? Should I continue providing reassurance for her (reassurance is bad for us HA grown-ups), but perhaps it is different with kids?
I did what online articles suggest - I acknowledged her fears, I supported her, etc… But smth tells me if it is clinical HAv- this is not enough.
Shit, so many times I warned people here “do not pass it to your child”, and here I am. This is one of HA terrible prices. Now I am really scared. Not because I am imagining my kid has brain tumor os smth. But because I see all signs that I have screwed her life with HA…
Any advise/experience would be very welcome! And I think I will bring her to psychologist for a chat…

[kyllikki]

Oh Allochka, my heart hurt for you, just reading the second half of this post (and the first part was so uplifting, too!)

If it helps at all, you are not the first person I know who has a child about this age who became obsessed or upset with their teeth.
Here in the US, there's this trend to tell children that if they eat "bad" foods like candy they will get "sugar bugs" on their teeth --
as you can imagine, for some children, just hearing that cues a complete freak out (I don't blame them!!!)
One friend (who doesn't have HA) told me her little girl who didn't eat candy very often came home from valentine's day at school wailing that she had eaten a piece of candy even though she knew "the bugs might come" and now she felt like her mouth was "full of bugs." Madness, isn't it, to put ideas like this into child's heads that would terrify even an adult if they truly believed it (and a six year old certainly doesn't innately have, and arguably isn't at all ready to develop, the cognitive machinery to fully challenge their thinking!)

Anyway, I suspect your little girl just has a very active imagination and her idea of what it means for her teeth to rot and fall out probably doesn't at all match dental reality.
As strange as it sounds, maybe talking to her about any cavities that you have had will help? And also, preparing her for losing her baby teeth, if she hasn't already?
Perhaps the "tooth fairy", if you're into that sort of thing, could leave her a note of encouragement?

I don't have any good answers, but I don't think this is at all your fault.
Sending all my best, hang in there, you are doing a terrific job (it comes across in your post...)

[Allochka]

Thank you SO much for your thoughtful and kind reply!
To be honest, I didn’t know that oral health obsession is rather common in kids… For me her behaviour signalled health anxiety starting. It never occured to me that it is just her active imagination (she does have it, and is very emotional). So perhaps, if her friend would tell her that a monster would come to scare her every night, she would obsess the same, but only about monster/not health related topic?
Maybe (just maybe) it simply coincided that it was a teeth scare, which for me equals HA…
It does give me hope and helps to look at things differently. I will monitor her for a while. She has lost baby teeth (she believed in tooth fairy before, but not anymore :-( This year she even said Santa doesn’t exist :-( They grow soooo fast)) She also visits dentist regularly and is not afraid of him. But the fact that friend scared her about rotting teeth made her crazy.
But your message really gives me hope that this is not HA, but some general emotional outburst.
Nevertheless, I hope my message will come through - if we do not try to control HA, our kids are possibly in danger of having it too. I do not wish this on anyone’s child. Let’s fight it, guys! It is like diabetes - can’t be cured, but can be very well controlled, resulting in happy fulfilled life!

[kyllikki]

That's a wonderful message and I completely agree! Hope all goes well and wishing you all the very best :flowers:

[Allochka]

Thank you!