Religiosity, considered the heartfelt engagement in one’s faith and spiritual practices, is a deeply meaningful part of many people’s lives. For children, learning religious rituals, beliefs, and moral frameworks can provide comfort, community, and structure. Yet for some young people, religious belief becomes tangled with anxiety in a way that becomes. Religion is no longer a source of stability and comfort; instead, it is something that hinders the ability to function. This condition is called religious scrupulosity, a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that centers on religious and moral fears.
Here, we explore what scrupulosity is, how it differs from healthy religious devotion, how it can emerge in late childhood (ages 8-10), and how you as parents can support their children through evidence-based approaches informed by the latest empirical research.
Understanding Religious Scrupulosity
It is important to understand that religious scrupulosity is not devotion; it is instead a mental health condition. Like other expressions of OCD, scrupulosity involves:
- Intrusive, unwanted thoughts that provoke anxiety.
- Compulsive behaviors or mental rituals aimed at reducing that anxiety.
The difference is that the intrusive thoughts and rituals are strongly tied to religion or morality. A child struggling with religious scrupulosity might worry obsessively about:
- Whether they have sinned or committed some moral transgression.
- Whether they have performed a prayer “correctly.”
- Whether they are spiritually impure or unacceptable to a higher power.
These fears are not simply moments of concern or earnest striving to live up to one’s beliefs. Instead, they are distressing and chronic obsessions that interfere with daily functioning and cause significant emotional pain. Religious practice, which is intended to bring them closer to their faith, instead becomes a source of doubt and anxiety. Bottom line, there is an important distinction: healthy religious practices restore comfort, scrupulosity rituals amplify distress.
Recognizing the Difference between Religious Scrupulosity and Devotion
Religious devotion is voluntary and centered around the meaning associated. People engage in prayer, ritual, or moral reflection because it aligns with their values, bringing emotional comfort, connection, and a sense of purpose. In contrast, with scrupulosity, anxiety and fear are the driving forces. The behaviors which in other cases would be habits of meaning become repetitions coming from a place of fear and distress.
What are the key differences?:
1. Motivation
- Devotion: Participation in religious practices stems from love, belief, or spiritual fulfillment.
- Scrupulosity: Participation in religious practices is done from a place of anxiety and fear of punishment or moral failing.
2. Emotional Response
- Devotion: Practices help to generate comfort and stability.
- Scrupulosity: Rituals may temporarily relieve anxiety, but ultimately reinforce fear and doubt.
3. Flexibility
- Devotion: Practices are flexible and integrated into life.
- Scrupulosity: Rituals are rigid, time-consuming, and interfere with life responsibilities.
4. Insight
- Devotion: People see faith practices as purposeful and aligned with their values.
- Scrupulosity: People may recognize the thoughts are irrational but feel powerless to stop them.
How Scrupulosity May Look in Young Children
The period between ages 8 and 10 is a time of rapid cognitive and moral development. Children at this stage are becoming increasingly capable of abstract thought, moral reasoning, and understanding complex social and religious rules. While healthy developmental milestones, they also create the opportunity for anxious thinking to morph into OCD symptoms — including scrupulosity.
Research on scrupulosity for children is limited compared to adult work, but what exists highlights a few key ways it can show up:
1. Pathological Guilt and Worry About Sin
Children might worry obsessively that they have committed a sin even when no clear moral violation occurred. This goes beyond developmental guilt (e.g., “I accidentally hurt someone”) and becomes persistent.
2. Excessive Ritualization
Rituals may be attempts to neutralize distress in the form of overly long prayers, repeated confession beyond religious norms, or obsessive repeating of religious acts. This will look similar to religious devotion, but taken to an extreme.
3. Reassurance Seeking
Children may frequently seek reassurance from parents, religious leaders, or peers about whether they have “done right” or avoided sin. While occasional reassurance is typical in children, persistent and repetitive requests may be a reflection of anxiety and scrupulosity.
4. Rigid Moral Thinking
Children with scrupulosity often show cognitive rigidity: an inability to tolerate uncertainty about moral or religious matters. Research on OCD suggests that intolerance of uncertainty and believing thinking something is as bad as doing it are elevated in scrupulosity.
The important thing to recognize is that these symptoms are not developmentally normative. They are excessive, cause functional impairment, and are maintained by anxiety rather than by spiritual growth.
How Parents Can Help
Supporting a child with scrupulosity begins with understanding that the problem is not a lack of faith or a phase of religious development. It is a psychiatric condition that may require evidence-based interventions similar to those used for other forms of OCD.
1. Education
Understanding that scrupulosity is part of OCD — not just “strong faith” — helps parents respond with compassion and clarity. Parents who are informed are better able to distinguish between supportive religious practice and anxiety-driven compulsions.
Tip: Read about OCD symptom patterns, including how intrusive thoughts and compulsive rituals function to maintain anxiety.
2. Seek Professional Help
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) are typically the standard of care for those struggling with OCD. ERP teaches the child to face feared thoughts or situations (e.g., ambiguous moral uncertainty) while refraining from compulsive rituals. This helps break the anxiety-ritual cycle.
Tip: What will be important is to find a practitioner who is able to recognize developmental needs: how CBT and ERP may need to look different for children.
3. Reduce Family Accommodation
Family accommodation refers to ways family members unwittingly reinforce OCD symptoms. This looks like providing reassurance, helping with rituals, or modifying family routines to avoid triggering the child’s anxiety. While rooted in good intentions, research suggests that it makes OCD worse in the long run.
Tip: With therapist guidance, parents can slowly reduce accommodating behaviors and encourage appropriate coping.
4. Support Healthy Religious Practice Without Reinforcing Rituals
Parents do not need to remove religion from a child’s life; in most cases, they should not. Instead, by working with clinicians, families can help children engage in age-appropriate religious practices that are meaningful and work to root them without stress.
Together with a therapist, parents can establish clear boundaries: e.g., agreed-upon prayer routines that align with the family’s faith tradition, and limits on repetitive or ritualized behaviors that are tied to anxiety.
5. Promote Distress Tolerance and Self-Compassion
Low tolerance of uncertainty and harsh self-judgment contribute to scrupulosity. Helping children develop self-compassion and skills for managing uncertainty reduces the power of obsessive thoughts. Techniques such as mindfulness and emotional regulation exercises can be powerful adjuncts to CBT.
The Big Picture
Religious scrupulosity may look like a child who is devout, but if distress is underneath then it is no longer devotion. When prayer, ritual, or moral worry becomes excessive, consuming, and anxiety-driven, what we are seeing is not a phase of devotion, but an expression of OCD requiring compassion and evidence-based intervention.
Parents can be powerful allies in their child’s recovery when they understand the difference between faith and anxiety, engage with clinicians trained in pediatric OCD, and support their child with empathy instead of fear or avoidance.
References Supporting Article
Mathews, R. E., & Sarawgi, S. (2025). From doubt to direction: Untangling pediatric scrupulosity. Children, 12(4), 528. https://doi.org/10.3390/children12040528
Stevens, S., & Smith-Schrandt, H. L. (2023). Scrupulosity obsessive-compulsive disorder in children. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 61(11), 10-16. https://doi.org/10.3928/02793695-20231011-03
Siev, J., Berman, A. H., Rasmussen, J., & Wilhelm, S. (2025). Obsessional cognitive styles in scrupulosity and contamination obsessive-compulsive disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 193, Article 104821. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2025.104821
Tal, I., Cervin, M., Liberman, N., & Dar, R. (2023). Obsessive-compulsive symptoms in children are related to sensory sensitivity and to seeking proxies for internal states. Brain Sciences, 13(10), 1463. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13101463
