Oppositional Defiant Disorder: Rebels Without A Cause.
“Teach coping strategies. So often, kids don’t know how to calm down on their own. They need to be explicitly taught skills that can help them feel calm, safe, and regulated. Most importantly, kids need to learn and practice these skills when they are calm (not when they are upset).” (Pathway to Success)
If you’re a parent, you’ve heard stories of perfectly well-behaved model students (usually from other parents, the kind we find a little irritating) and probably asked yourself, “What are those guys doing that I’m not? What are we getting wrong?” Parenting is complex, and nobody gets everything right, but sometimes, our beloved angels act like terrors.
And for some kids, it’s never-ending. We remind ourselves that “children are our future.” For the parents of kids with ODD, that idea is bone-chilling. No level of punishment or discipline can get these children to follow the rules. They are impossible to control and do not respond to discipline, teaching, or parenting like other children.
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) is a childhood behavioral disorder marked by defiance and disobedience to authority figures, irritability, aggression, and vindictiveness. If your kid has been an absolute terror, throwing tantrums over everything and breaking the rules for what seems like no reason, consistently for six months, talk to a doctor about a diagnosis.
It gets tricky, though; This disorder is frequently misattributed to children with ADHD, other learning disabilities, and mood disorders. Diagnosis goes beyond behavior, and vindictiveness is key. It’s not enough that the kid is “badly behaved”; they hold a grudge about it.
We are not talking about typical teenage defiance when an adolescent challenges authority figures or parents within reasonable boundaries. The push for individual independence is a developmental stage of most adolescents.
Children with ODD live in a world where they can’t do anything right. They feel like they’re being punished for everything, even minor mistakes. When they follow the rules, they still get punished. To a kid with ODD, there is no authority figure that they can trust. Everyone is mad at them all the time… so they may as well break the rules and give everyone a good reason. Anger feels like power to them in a world where they often feel powerless.
ODD hits a rough point in a child’s mental and emotional development, where they’re developing a sense of what the concept of “rules” means. When that concept gets filtered through an overwhelmingly punishment-based environment, the whole thought process of “how should I respond to this social situation” gets warped. Kids with ODD are not just being little jerks because they want to be; they’re being little jerks because that seems like a rational response. Causes of ODD seem to be a mix of genetic and environmental issues and extend past just the family alone; peers and teachers make a big difference in how those neurological developments turn out. ODD is more prevalent in children with family histories of mood disorders and substance abuse, and stressors in the environment, such as poverty, neglect, or other traumatic factors, can make ODD more intense.
But, chances are, it’s not the parent’s fault, either. It’s often confusing to parents when they use the same ‘rules,’ teaching, encouragement, and discipline for all their children, yet all the children react differently. You’ve probably heard people say, “She was happy and calm from the moment she was born, but our other child was the complete opposite.” Parents may ‘blame’ themselves for the negative behaviors of their children and feel at a loss to address it when children' act out’ in unacceptable behaviors that cause the parents stress and disfavor from family, friends, and society, as it’s ‘not the way’ the parents raised their children.
ODD is a neurological disorder, so it comes up even when parents “do everything right,” as impossible as that actually is. Children are like any other human being: incredibly complex, with a full (and often heightened) array of thoughts, feelings, and emotions. That makes it difficult to pinpoint “where” things started to go wrong… and that’s usually a waste of time, anyway.
Once a diagnosis is made, there’s a LOT to be done.
Treating ODD is still very experimental and incredibly tricky. Medications used to treat other mood disorders and ADHD have shown the most promise in pharmacology, but therapeutic practices are more broadly successful, specifically parental management training.
Here’s where it gets rough; in order to manage kids with ODD, parents and children essentially have to be re-trained on how to interact with each other. It's wild; you treat ODD by treating the parents as well as the kids. Being more authoritative with the child will not work; you can’t discipline them into better behavior. Instead, parents must find more effective ways to communicate with their children; those modified rules tend to have better outcomes. This training/communication will also be beneficial in other arenas where the child comes into contact with authority figures, particularly school and, later, at work. Once again, being authoritarian with these children isn't going to cut it. They are used to being punished. That means that teachers must also be brought in on the new training.
This new relationship style will run counter to a lot of conventional parenting wisdom, but that’s okay. Raising kids is a lifelong endeavor, and it’s important to remember that how they interact with their parents will influence how they interact with the rest of the world. It’s a long road, and parents and kids must walk it together.
These symptoms should be addressed as soon as possible. If not handled properly, the prognosis is poor as ODD children become older or become adults. If left untreated or managed, these individuals frequently have constant conflict in their family, get in trouble with the law, vandalize property, physically attack or threaten others, are constantly in trouble at school or kicked out of school, are jailed, lead unhappy, angry lives, or lives of violence.
For further info, check out these resources:
“Warn a kid with oppositional defiant disorder not to do something, and you’ve pretty much guaranteed the crime.” Lisa Gardner
Those with ODD feel as if people in authority are out to get them, mistreated, disliked, angry, and persecuted. Some consider themselves as rebels willing to fight against their perceived tormentors.
Even from a very early age, some children may exhibit oppositional defiant disorder. They will feel that “No one has the right or the authority to tell me what to do.”
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Note: Clifton is the author of “The Marriage Vampire” (dealing with narcissistic personalities), now available on Amazon.
Clifton Fuller
LCSW, LPC, LMFT
