My Sweet Little OCD Boy

Years after we lived together in college in our off-campus apartments my dearest friend Holly confessed when comparing notes with my husband about how she used to test out my OCD tendencies.
She’d set the can of shaving cream one way in the shower and flip the toilet paper roll so the sheets came from the bottom rather than top-over. Then she’d wait and she how quickly I’d go into the bathroom and set everything back “just so”. I couldn’t help myself. I can’t, even now.
I drive Jeff mad by putting away the car magazines he leaves out in “his” bathroom. I can’t settle into bed at night until the house is picked up to my satisfaction. I can’t (usually) leave the house with the bed unmade. Jeff teases me, gently, about my obsessive need to put things “just so” in the house.
The pillows on the couch go in a particular pattern – zippers facing down. When I find them in any other pattern I set them back – one large, closest to the arm, one small – each side just so.
I’m not “Monk” by any stretch – but it’s there. The obsessive compulsive tendencies I’ve inherited from my father that he says: “All Good Heilmans” have. (What do the BAD Heilmans have I want to know? Healthy mental well-being and good self-esteem?)

Anyways - recently I’ve noticed Mr. Man has most strongly inherited his mom’s OCD tendencies. Of all our kids – he’s the most upset when things aren’t “just so”. We noticed it first when he was just starting to talk and he yelled at Daddy for not zipping his coat the right way!
Then one night this winter when he was going to sleep in our bed he asked for a tissue to wipe his nose and then would NOT lay down or rest until it was in the garbage can in the bathroom. No amount of my assuring him I’d throw it away would calm him – I had to get up right then and throw it away. (Or let him do so).

This morning as we called him down to breakfast from the upstairs he said: “Yay! Breakfast!!” and then paused at the top of the stairs. He saw a wet washcloth that Daddy had left there – probably on it’s way to the laundry and just momentarily waylaid at the top of the steps to the lower level. Without saying a word he picked up the washcloth and put it neatly in the bathroom sink – where wet wash cloths should be, right?

I yelled down to Jeff: “Look what he did!! Oh my sweet little OCD boy!! What a good boy!” Jeff said: “No! Don’t encourage him!!” And I suppose I can see his point..
But I ask you – would ANY mom in her right mind not be thrilled with a 2 year old who has an ingrained sense of need to pick up the house? A natural inclination to tidying?
Heck no! I’m thrilled – and yet again awed by the power of genetics.