Hypochondriac

Ryan is turning into a little hypochondriac. Here are a few examples.

He tells me almost every morning that he doesn't feel well. Within an hour of getting up he wants to lay back down. He tells me he's sick and he doesn't want to do anything. He will usually tell me again later in the day once or twice that he is sick.

The other day he watched an episode of Caillou where he was sick with the flu. Later that day Ryan came up to me and told me he had a fever. I felt him and he felt completely normal. But he was pretty sure he was sick with the flu just like Caillou.

He is obsessed with his "owies". He is constantly looking at his toes and fingers for new owies, which are usually so tiny I need a microscope to see them.

I can tell that Ryan is a bit of a worrier and internalizes certain things. So I understand why he may have some hypochondriac tendencies. But I have no idea why he thinks he is sick every single day. Maybe it's to get attention from me and I need to work more on spending some one-on-one time with him. Maybe he really thinks he is sick. I don't know.

Does your child imagine they are sick when they really aren't?