Sometimes anxiety presents as the need to control -- i.e., a perceived lack of control causes the anxiety.
My DS has an anxiety diagnosis and has this. It can get really bad depending how stressed he is. Like when his vision disorder was undetected and his hypotonia wasn't being properly accommodated he had control issues of color of ink and color of cups, having his picture taken, being "forced" to sing certain songs, say the Pledge, etc. As his vision and hypotonia were addressed and accommodated - almost all of that fell away.
My DD loves new experiences, but has a high "need to know" about...everything (what's that sound? what are you talking about over there? what do they mean when they say XYZ on the radio about the dangers of 123?), which is where I can see the anxiety.
My DS has this too. It was the school psych and the principal who pointed this out actually (they're not all bad LOL)... It's in his IEp and at the IEP meeting that is the one thing that is very constructive that happens - that is, that they discuss how all of the teachers and aids need to know how to approach this sort of thing with DS because some see the insistent "why" as oppositional when it isn't, it is his anxiety. For example (school actually gave this example at the IEP meeting), kids were told to bring their coats with them to art class... My DS started getting all concerned and needing to know "why would we have to do that? - we shouldn't be needing our coats in art class? Something is going on - what is it?" What was going on was there was to be a surprise fire drill and teacher wanted to just say to DS "because we said so that's why" but she knew that would cause a problem and stress him out so even though she couldn't tell him exactly why, she sat down with him and explained as much of the "why" as possible - i.e., how principal gave her this order and since we do trust Mr. Principal... etc ... He is fine with the surprise fire drill (or any transition at all or any new experiences) because he knows the why behind them... it's when he doesn't know the "why" behind something he starts getting anxious and gets really anxious when he is "punished" for asking "why" with responses like "because I said so!" he really starts getting upset then!
