Have you considered OCD? My son has behaviors like your child's and when we asked his pediatrician about it, the doctor told us about OCD. He referred us to a psychiatrist for an assessment and sure enough, the psychiatrist diagnosed OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). There was a local hospital program for kids with OCD - 12 weeks long. After that program our son was MUCH better. We also learned what parents can do to help kids with their recovery. I suggest you find out what your doctor thinks - if it is OCD it usually requires professional treatment but it has a good prognosis.

If it is OCD, you can't help your child by telling her there's nothing to worry about. Instead, try to help her deal with her discomfort or fear. Emotional Coaching is a good place to start - see Mrs. Radcliffe's book or there is a download on this site about emotional coaching. It is a technique that parents can use to acknowledge, accept and calm their kids' emotions. Sometimes just allowing the fear to exist can help make it easier to bear or even help it go away. At the very least, it is a first step in handling the fear whereas just telling the child to ignore her real feelings is likely to make the feeling even more intense.

When I emotionally coach my child through her fear she starts screaming at me, "don't tell me that!" It doesn't calm her down at all. In fact it just makes her madder and more frantic. I can't even try that technique with her anymore. All she wants is reassurance that whatever she is afraid of isn't bad or dangerous. So that's what I do for her - I just reassure her and that calms her down.

I used to do that for my anxious child too but then I noticed that I had to give reassurance over and over and over endlessly. When I finally stopped offering reassurance, my child had to face his fear and deal with it and THAT's when he began his real recovery!

OCD is a medical condition. Sometimes you need medicine for it and sometimes cognitive-behavioral therapy. Reassurance and/or emotional coaching make no difference. The condition needs professional help and that starts with a proper assessment. Nothing we did for our child helped until we he went on medication. It took us a long time to come to terms with that and we probably delayed his recovery by a few years because we didn't want to believe we couldn't make it go away ourselves. My advice to you is see your doctor right away and give your child the help she needs!

For the record, OCD (if that is what this child has) does not always require medicine. Often, specific parenting techniques and cognitive-behavioral therapy are enough.

I'm no expert, but if you can help her through this now she'll be better off in years to come. Maybe she thinks that something bad that once happened could have been prevented "if only she had...(fill in the blank)". Try to figure out what that was. Explain to her that it might seem that she has that amount of influence but sometimes 2 things happen at once but don't seem related. Use an example. Do not try to prove that they are not causing each other, just show that there is the least amount of things in common between the 2 things occuring. Confusing? Pick an example of something steady and something changing. Sometimes they occur at the same time but other times they don't, the 2 things don't automatically happen in tandum. Make sense? I hope so.

Sometimes when kids are young, it's typical for them to not understand about other how other people experience things just as they do and how that child is not the only one in a made-up world. It may take time for your daughter to learn that she cannot control the things that happen merely by turning on and off the faucet 3 times.

Another idea is for you to role-play what you want her to do. Have another adult outside the house help you. Phone them in front of your daughter. Arrange things ahead of time and then while on the phone in front of her, openly ask when they'll call again that day. "you don't know?", you ask. "ok, we'll be here."Hang up.
Use that event, the randomness of when they'll call, and one of the habits she does. Have the person call once after you imitate the habit, then have them call at a different time, much sooner or much later than before when you do the preferred habit. Do it again, but slightly differently the next day. Try to show as little in common between the call time and the habit you're correcting... then talk about her habit not controlling the weather or the number of cars going by in an hour or the number of times the neighborhood dog barks. Don't tell her it's silly or she may feel she's failed in drawing conclusions. Just ask her "is it more likely that you turning the water on made the dog bark or that the person passing the dog made him excited?" If your daughter is old enough, she may understand, if not, this looks more like what I did when we had no routine in my home and I desperately wanted predictability in my life, like someone telling me what when bedtime was approaching so I could have time to react and not feel caught off-guard. I used to flick the light switches on and off an even number of times when I was 5 because I'd seen some people be supersticious, doing weird things. But I stopped when it seemed to have no effect on goings-on. Good luck.
-Kris