Parents often long for the day their babies can use words to explain their needs and wants. Sometimes, though, when that day comes, words don’t make the problems any clearer. Many preschool-age children struggle with seemingly irrational fears, obsessions and compulsions, leaving parents bewildered as ever.

One mom, Kerri, says her son Jackson was convinced she was “stealing” his clothes every time she took them away to the laundry room. “He seemed sure my plan was to make him go out into the world naked,” she says. Melissa, mom to Caedmon, says her 4-year-old son has phobia-like behavior about anything that could make his hands sticky. “He ate granola bars for breakfast for months and now will hardly touch them because he’s afraid he’ll get sticky,” she says. “Once in Wal-Mart while he was in the cart, halfway through shopping, his hands somehow got sticky. He had a meltdown and we almost had to leave.”

Is it normal?

Dr. Kim Dielmann of the Conway Psychological Assessment Center says that most behavior of this nature is normal in children between the ages of 2 and 5 years old. “That is about the age when children start to realize that things can harm you,” she says. “If they have an experience and it happens to be negative, to them, that’s how things work.” Dr. Dielmann explains that children at this stage don’t have the processing skills to differentiate that one bad experience is separate from other similar, possibly positive experiences. She also says that matters like fears of separation, obsessions (i.e. wearing a superhero costume every day of the week) and compulsions are all normal behaviors, which children tend to outgrow around age 5.

How to tell if it’s something more

There are some signs to watch out for, however. Dielmann recommends if a parent suspects their child’s behavior is especially abnormal, ask “do these behaviors interfere with their ability to do basic functions?” For example, if a child refuses to go to daycare or to someone’s house because a certain object won’t be there with them, or if their behavior seems more extreme than the other children their age, it could be a sign of something more serious.

Family history plays a role too, Dielmann says. She suggests parents compare their children to themselves. “Did you, the parent, have the same issues significant enough to cause problems in your life?” she says. “If they caused problems in your life, you may want to seek additional support.”

Still, the signs alone aren’t enough to make a diagnosis. When seeing patients, Dielmann looks for a lack of engagement socially, limited eye contact, and disturbances in sleep and eating patterns to determine if obsessive behavior or irrational fears are more than just growing pains.

Though the letters are tossed around casually, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), is actually a rare diagnosis for children. “I’ve diagnosed very few kids under the age of 10 with OCD,” Dielmann says. General anxiety, she said, is the more likely culprit.

What should parents do?

“Ease children into situations slowly,” Dielmann suggests. “Or let them watch you in whatever situation that makes them uncomfortable, so they can see there’s nothing to fear.” In extreme situations and complete meltdowns, parents should try and determine specifically what is so upsetting to their children and deal with the root of the problem. However, in the heat of the moment, parents should comfort first and reason with them later. “Try to hold them, comfort them, but don’t let them escape the situation, because that reinforces their behavior,” she explains.

The bottom line is that any irrational behavior could be symptomatic of a problem or disorder, but most likely is the sign of growing and learning.

“It’s typical for young children to have irrational fears,” Dielmann says. “They haven’t had enough experience with the world yet to be able to figure out what’s real, what’s not real.”