Ethan is eight. Every night at dinner, he insists that his portion be exactly the same size as his sister's. Not approximately the same—exactly the same. He studies both plates. He counts the pieces of pasta. If his sister has one more green bean than he does, he can't eat until it's corrected.

His parents have tried reasoning with him. They've explained that the portions are basically equal, that a single green bean doesn't matter, that fairness doesn't mean identical. None of it helps.

When they equalize the portions, Ethan visibly relaxes. He can finally eat. But the relief is temporary. Tomorrow night, the same ritual repeats. Last week, he started counting crackers in his snack pack. Now he's monitoring screen time to the minute.

Ethan's parents wonder: Is this about fairness? Or is something else going on?

For some children, fairness-tracking isn't really about justice. It's about control. Making things "even" is a way to make an unpredictable world feel manageable. The fairness obsession is anxiety wearing a fairness costume.

Not sure this is what you're seeing? If you want help distinguishing between different patterns of fairness anxiety, start with our guide to recognizing fairness anxiety in children.

The Anxiety-Fairness Connection

To understand what's happening with children like Ethan, we need to understand something called intolerance of uncertainty.

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is a dispositional characteristic—a trait—that describes how strongly a person reacts to situations that are uncertain or unpredictable. Some people are comfortable with ambiguity; others find it unbearable. For those with high intolerance of uncertainty, not knowing what will happen feels genuinely threatening.

Research shows that children with anxiety disorders have significantly higher intolerance of uncertainty than non-anxious children (Comer et al., 2009). And here's the key insight: for these children, fairness-tracking can become a way to manage that intolerance.

Here's how it works:

For an anxious child, the world feels unpredictable and overwhelming. There are so many things they can't control: what other people do, what happens next, whether bad things will occur. This uncertainty is deeply uncomfortable—sometimes unbearable.

But rules provide structure. Equality provides predictability. If everyone follows the rules and everything is "even," then the world makes sense. There are no surprises. There's no ambiguity.

Unfairness, by contrast, introduces chaos. Exceptions introduce uncertainty. Even reasonable, benign departures from "the way things should be" can trigger anxiety.

When Ethan says "that's not fair," he often means:

  • "This is different than I expected"
  • "I don't know what's going to happen now"
  • "Things feel out of control"
  • "I need this to be fixed so I can feel okay"

The fairness complaint is real—but the underlying distress isn't really about justice. It's about predictability. It's about control.

The Relief Cycle

Here's what makes this pattern so persistent: the fairness-fixing works—sort of.

When Ethan's parents equalize the portions, his anxiety drops. He feels relief. He can finally relax and eat his dinner.

But the relief is temporary. Tomorrow, a new "unfairness" will appear. The anxiety will return. And the only way to make it stop will be to fix this new unfairness too.

Over time, Ethan learns: fairness-fixing makes the bad feeling go away. So he becomes more vigilant about detecting unfairness, more insistent on correcting it, more dependent on the fixing.

This is a classic anxiety cycle. The "solution" (fixing the unfairness) provides short-term relief, which reinforces the behavior. But it doesn't address the underlying intolerance of uncertainty. So the anxiety keeps coming back, often stronger than before, requiring more and more fixing.

It's like scratching an itch that only gets itchier the more you scratch it.

Signs This Is Anxiety-Driven

How can you tell if a child's fairness concerns are really about anxiety and control, rather than a strong sense of justice?

The child seems driven by anxiety rather than moral outrage:

  • The emotional quality feels like anxiety—tension, restlessness, visible distress—not anger or indignation
  • Physical symptoms may accompany the distress: stomachache, muscle tension, difficulty breathing
  • The child seems relieved when things are fixed—but the relief is temporary
  • The pattern repeats: fix one unfairness, and another appears immediately

The "fixing" has a compulsive quality:

  • The child has to make things even—they can't let it go even when they try
  • They may recognize that their reaction is "too much" but feel unable to stop
  • Attempts to resist lead to escalating distress
  • The evening or fixing brings relief, then the cycle repeats

Other areas of life show similar patterns:

  • Rigidity about routines and schedules
  • Difficulty with uncertainty or unexpected changes
  • Frequent reassurance-seeking: "Is this okay? Are you sure? Promise?"
  • Need for things to be "just right" in other domains
  • Other anxiety symptoms

The key diagnostic question:

Is this about justice or about control?

A child with strong justice sensitivity is upset because something wrong happened—a violation of moral principles. They're often more distressed about unfairness to others than to themselves. They want the world to be fair because fairness is right.

An anxiety-driven child is upset because something unpredictable happened. Their distress is about their own discomfort, not abstract principles. They want the world to be "fair" because fairness is controllable.

Both patterns are real. Both cause genuine distress. But they respond to different approaches.

The OCD Overlap

Some children with intense fairness-fixing behaviors have OCD—or OCD-like features. This is particularly true of the "just-right" or "symmetry" subtype.

What "just-right" OCD looks like:

Children with this presentation experience what researchers call "not just right experiences" (NJREs)—an internal sensation that something is off, incomplete, or wrong. This feeling is difficult to describe but impossible to ignore. The only way to relieve it is to "fix" whatever triggered it.

In the context of fairness, this might look like:

  • Needing portions to be exactly equal—not approximately
  • Arranging items so they're perfectly even or symmetrical
  • Counting to ensure equal numbers
  • Touching or tapping in equal amounts on each side
  • Repeating actions until they feel "just right"
  • Unable to stop even when they want to

Research has identified symmetry and ordering as one of the core symptom dimensions of OCD (Leckman et al., 1997). Children with this subtype tend to be diagnosed earlier, often have more severe symptoms, and may have a more challenging course of treatment (Summerfeldt, 2004).

Signs that OCD may be involved:

  • Internal sensation of "wrongness" that must be corrected
  • Ritualistic behaviors around evening or balancing
  • Significant time spent on fairness-related behaviors (more than just complaints)
  • The child recognizes the behavior is excessive but can't stop
  • Distress if prevented from completing the "fixing"

Important: Not all anxiety-driven fairness concerns are OCD. Many children have elevated intolerance of uncertainty without meeting criteria for OCD. But if the pattern has a compulsive, driven quality that the child can't control, professional evaluation is warranted.

The Accommodation Trap

If you're the parent of an anxiety-driven child, you've probably discovered something: it's much easier to just make things equal than to deal with the meltdown.

When Ethan's parents add one more green bean to his plate, the dinner can proceed peacefully. When they insist that the portions are "fine," everyone suffers. So they accommodate.

This is completely understandable. It's also, unfortunately, part of the problem.

Family accommodation is the term researchers use to describe the ways parents modify their behavior to prevent or reduce their child's anxiety-related distress. It includes things like:

  • Providing excessive reassurance
  • Making sure things are exactly equal
  • Adhering to rigid child-assigned rules
  • Modifying family routines
  • Going along with the child's "fairness" demands

Studies show that over 97% of parents of anxious children engage in at least some accommodation (Lebowitz et al., 2013). It's virtually universal. Why? Because it works—in the short term.

But here's the problem: accommodation maintains anxiety. By helping the child avoid distress, you're teaching them that:

  1. Their anxiety is dangerous and must be avoided
  2. They can't handle discomfort on their own
  3. The way to feel better is to have someone fix things for them

Each time you accommodate, you provide temporary relief—but you also strengthen the anxiety cycle. The child learns that fairness-fixing is necessary, that their distress is intolerable, that they need you to make things okay.

Research consistently shows that higher levels of family accommodation are associated with more severe anxiety symptoms, greater impairment, and worse outcomes over time (Thompson-Hollands et al., 2014). Reducing accommodation, by contrast, is associated with improvement.

The Reassurance Trap

One specific form of accommodation deserves special attention: reassurance.

Anxious children are often reassurance-seeking children. They ask questions like:

  • "Is this fair? Are you sure?"
  • "Is everything going to be okay?"
  • "Is my piece the same size as hers?"
  • "You promise it's equal?"

And parents, wanting to help, provide answers. Over and over and over.

The reassurance cycle works like this:

  1. Child feels anxious or uncertain
  2. Child asks for reassurance: "Is this fair?"
  3. Parent provides reassurance: "Yes, it's fair."
  4. Child feels temporary relief
  5. Anxiety returns (often within minutes)
  6. Child asks for reassurance again
  7. Parent provides reassurance again
  8. Cycle repeats and strengthens

The trap is that reassurance feels like helping. You're comforting your child. You're giving them information. You're being responsive.

But reassurance, like other forms of accommodation, provides only temporary relief while reinforcing the underlying pattern. The child learns that they need external validation to feel okay. They don't learn to tolerate uncertainty. They don't build coping skills. They become dependent on you to manage their anxiety.

If you've noticed that no matter how many times you answer your child's questions, they're never satisfied—that's the reassurance trap in action.

How to Help

If a child's fairness anxiety is really about control and anxiety, here's what helps.

1. Increase Predictability Where You Can

Anxious children need structure. The goal isn't to eliminate all rules—it's to reduce baseline anxiety so the need to control fairness decreases.

This means:

  • Consistent routines and schedules
  • Clear, predictable rules
  • Advance warning of changes ("Tomorrow we're doing something different...")
  • Transparency about decisions

When the child's world feels more predictable overall, the need to control fairness specifically may decrease. They have other sources of stability.

2. Resist the Reassurance Trap

When your child asks "Is this fair? Are you sure?"—resist the urge to engage repeatedly.

Better approach:

  • Acknowledge the worry once: "I hear you're worried about whether this is fair."
  • Provide one clear response: "I've looked at both portions and I'm comfortable with how they are."
  • Then don't engage repeatedly: "I've already answered that. We're moving on."

This is hard. Your child may escalate. They may get more distressed, not less. That's actually okay—they need to learn that they can survive the discomfort without you fixing it.

Validation without reassurance:

"I can see you're really worried about this. That feeling is uncomfortable. I'm confident you can handle it."

This acknowledges their distress without reinforcing the idea that the distress is dangerous or that you need to fix it.

3. Build Tolerance for "Unfair"

The child needs to learn—through experience—that they can survive situations that feel uneven or unfair. That the discomfort passes. That they're okay.

This is essentially exposure. Not creating unfairness to torture them, but not scrambling to prevent it either.

What this looks like:

  • Let natural imperfections stand. Don't equalize portions before the child notices.
  • When unfairness occurs, acknowledge it without fixing it: "You're right, your sister got one more. That happens sometimes."
  • Support them through the discomfort rather than removing it.
  • Celebrate when they tolerate unfairness, even slightly.

Over time, with repeated exposure, the anxiety response weakens. The child learns that unfairness is uncomfortable but survivable.

4. Avoid Over-Accommodating

This is the hardest part: letting your child be uncomfortable.

It's tempting to just make things equal so the meltdown doesn't happen. But this:

  • Reinforces the belief that things must be equal
  • Teaches the child that meltdowns work
  • Doesn't build tolerance for discomfort
  • Strengthens the anxiety cycle

Instead: Acknowledge the feeling, hold your boundary, tolerate their distress.

"I hear you think this isn't fair. I've made my decision. I know you're upset—that's okay. The decision stands."

Their distress won't harm them. Learning to tolerate it is essential.

5. Consider Professional Help

If the pattern is severe, impairing, or has compulsive features, professional help can make a significant difference.

When to seek help:

  • The fairness-fixing takes up significant time
  • It's interfering with school, family, or social functioning
  • The child seems unable to stop even when they want to
  • You're seeing signs of OCD (rituals, compulsions, "just right" features)
  • Your own efforts haven't helped
  • The family is significantly stressed

What treatment looks like:

The gold standard for anxiety and OCD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), often with a component called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). This involves:

  • Gradually facing anxiety-provoking situations (unfairness, uncertainty)
  • Not engaging in avoidance or fixing behaviors
  • Learning that anxiety passes and they can handle discomfort

There are also parent-based interventions like SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at Yale. This approach focuses on reducing accommodation while increasing supportive responses—and research shows it's as effective as CBT for childhood anxiety (Lebowitz et al., 2020).

Don't wait too long. Anxiety patterns that aren't addressed tend to strengthen over time. Early intervention leads to better outcomes.

When It's Something Else

Anxiety-driven fairness concerns can look similar to other patterns:

Autism spectrum rigidity: Children on the spectrum often need sameness and predictability, and may have intense reactions to "unfairness." But the rigidity typically extends well beyond fairness to routines, sensory experiences, and many other domains. If you're seeing pervasive inflexibility, developmental evaluation may be helpful.

Justice sensitivity: Some children genuinely care deeply about fairness as a moral principle. Their distress is about injustice, not uncertainty. This is a temperament trait, not an anxiety disorder. See our article on justice sensitivity for more.

Divorce-related fairness anxiety: Children navigating two homes sometimes develop intense fairness concerns rooted in loyalty conflict, not anxiety. They're trying to love both parents "equally." This is a different pattern with a different solution. See our main guide for more.

If you're unsure what you're dealing with, professional evaluation can help clarify.

The Bottom Line

When fairness anxiety is really about control, the solution isn't to make everything perfectly equal. It's to help the child tolerate imperfection—to learn that the world won't fall apart if things aren't exactly even, and that they can survive the discomfort of uncertainty.

This is hard for the child. It's also hard for the adults who love them. Watching your child in distress and choosing not to "fix" it feels wrong. It goes against every parental instinct.

But accommodation doesn't help—it makes things worse. The kindest thing you can do for an anxious child is help them build tolerance for the uncertainty that's an inevitable part of life.

With patience, consistency, and sometimes professional support, it gets better.

Learn More

References

Comer, J. S., Roy, A. K., Furr, J. M., Gotimer, K., Beidas, R. S., Dugas, M. J., & Kendall, P. C. (2009). The Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale for Children: A psychometric evaluation. Psychological Assessment, 21(3), 402-411.

Lebowitz, E. R., Marin, C., Martino, A., Shimshoni, Y., & Silverman, W. K. (2020). Parent-based treatment as efficacious as cognitive-behavioral therapy for childhood anxiety: A randomized noninferiority study of supportive parenting for anxious childhood emotions. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(3), 362-372.

Lebowitz, E. R., Woolston, J., Bar-Haim, Y., Calvocoressi, L., Dauser, C., Warnick, E., ... & Leckman, J. F. (2013). Family accommodation in pediatric anxiety disorders. Depression and Anxiety, 30(1), 47-54.

Leckman, J. F., Grice, D. E., Boardman, J., Zhang, H., Vitale, A., Bondi, C., ... & Pauls, D. L. (1997). Symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 154(7), 911-917.

Summerfeldt, L. J. (2004). Understanding and treating incompleteness in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 60(11), 1155-1168.

Thompson-Hollands, J., Kerns, C. E., Pincus, D. B., & Comer, J. S. (2014). Parental accommodation of child anxiety and related symptoms: Range, impact, and correlates. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28(8), 765-773.