Children having
Oppositional Defiant Disorder or ODD, tend
to lose control over their temper. As a result,
you shall see these kids burst out of rage extremely
often. They get annoyed easily. They are hostile
while behaving with adults, and even with many
other children. They may want to push other kids
to their limits and in the worst case can even
bully other children.
Children with ODD
will always find an excuse to underachievement
and their inability to keep up with things. They
would tend to mix well with other kids with such
syndrome. If this happens to your kid in adolescence
then s/he would be even sulkier in nature. If
ODD continues, then the child shall eventually
grow up in an adult who would not be liked practically
by anyone.
For many kids,
being oppositional and defiant becomes the way
to resist authority and control. If you try to
exercise your authority over the child, then that
does not go well with most children. Children
with ODD, however, would not be at a level of
liking or disliking your attitude towards them.
For such children, your attempts to control the
child using your authority would raise the panic
flag inside their minds. That aggravates their
ODD symptoms and you are left with no option but
to face it. As a parent, the obvious question
coming to your mind is, "how do I face and overcome
such behavior?"
Most parents are
unaware of how to deal with oppositional defiance
disorder. They tend to try their own intuitive
means and hope for success. The means that the
ignorant parent may try would cover a wide range
of methods. These methods include negotiation,
threatening, shouting at the child, giving in
and bargaining to name the common ones. In reality,
the parent would hurt their own cause more than
help and hand over even more power to the child
through these actions.
What you need to
overcome such behavior is structure. And you need
to understand the kind of structure well enough
before you start implementing it. If you simply
stop at giving your child time for relaxation
and independence then that is not going to work.
Your child is suffering from ODD, and s/he will
use this time to plot revenge against the world.
You would want to take a deep breath here, stop
and change your parenting style to best suit to
deal with children with ODD.
Understand that
children become oppositional most often when they
are faced with problems and have no idea how to
solve them. They try to avoid the problem by forming
a mental resistance. Most often, this resistance
is the root of the ODD. The child needs to break
this resistance and solve the problem. The problem
can be anything like not wanting to get up of
the bed in the morning (fear of facing daily life)
or not wanting to do homework. You need to build
an aggressive component to your training planned
for removal of ODD in the child. Make sure that
you point the child to the proper angle of the
problem.
For example, you
may want to point out to the child that avoiding
homework won't help since the teacher will only
give further homework and eventually no homework
will get solved on its own - the child will only
keep lagging further which will only increase
the problem rather than avoid it.
During the process,
make sure that you keep avoiding any power struggle
with your child that may show up. You don't need
to solve every problem at one shot - rather, pick
and choose the problems that you want to start
with carefully and make sure that you win all
the battles in such a way that the child eventually
feels happy in making you win and getting his/her
better goal achieved rather than achieving further
defiance. If you argue then that will make him/her
argue back. Rather, set limits just like a professional
life (but in secret make sure you have your heart
in place) and expect your child to comply.
Please note that
Oppositional Defiant Disorder or ODD is
an issue of children getting to face real-life
problems with confidence and solving them. It
has nothing to do with self-esteem. You would
hurt your kid rather than help if you encourage
the kid to solve easy problems by putting enough
rewards on them. Occasional pat on the back is
okay, but make sure that the kids starts to attack
the harder problems. Once they attack the harder
problems and solve, they would start having the
self-confidence and self-esteem. That would help
them earn their praise, and do make sure that
you praise and reward the kid once they start
solving the harder problems. You should play the
role of a coach and guide to the child. Do not
play the role of a friend and or that of a cheerleader
- you are neither a friend of your child and nor
his/her cheerleader.
In general, form
a plan to manage your child's behavior and follow
the plan. Lay out rules and make sure that your
child follows them. If they lose control, give
them a bit of time to regain. For example, if
they lose temper a little while before their favorite
TV show, tell them that they have time to regain
control till the start of the show, and if they
don't regain control by that time then they are
not going to watch the TV show. Have methodical
plans for any step of life that you know your
child may cause a disturbance in. And follow the
plan meticulously till your child learns that
ODD is his/her problem and not his/her solution.
