I’m afraid my child is ODD. What should I do? For the past two years, when I talk to the doctors about it, I’m told that he’s going to grow out of it. He’s a boy. He’ll just grow out of it. My husband’s also in denial that anything is wrong. He just started Pre-K this year and the teachers are having a very, very hard time with him. We’ve tried spanking, time outs and taking things away, and nothing seems to be helping. I love him but I don’t know what to do.
So there are several issues I want to discuss in this letter. First of all, will the child grow out of it? Well, could be. Many children are diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder before they’re 8 years old. By the time they’re 8, 50% do grow out of the problem and are normal children. However, if their behavior persists past the age of 8 years old, 75% of these children have ODD even into adulthood. So, will this child grow out of? It’s very possible he will, it’s possible he won’t. No one can tell at this point.
The second issue is what to do about it. Now, the spankings, the punishments, they’re not working. That’s not a surprise to me because these children function in a different way. What you have to work on in a younger child really, all children are the same way, but in a younger child especially, you must focus on the developing a good strong loving relationship. You cannot make your child do anything he does not want to do. The way you control and direct a child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder is to show him that he really wants to behave. You do that through the strength of your relationship.
We at Complete Connection Parenting have done research in four continents with our child behavior program, and we have found is that it’s the relationship that makes all the difference for all these children.
So what you need to do is find a good strong parenting program. This program must focus on ODD children, and focus on building the relationship; not on discipline, not on techniques, but building the relationship. When you do this our research has shown in most cases the need for discipline goes away completely.
The third issue in this letter, which is a harder issue to address, is her husbands denial. It is very hard for a parent to face a problem when he does not know the solution. It’s much easier to deny the problem, and I understand that very well.
Can you do anything about it if your partner is in denial? Hard to say. One thing you can do is when you start raising a child properly, you show you have a direction. Your husband may come around and back up and see the problem, see the solution, and not be in denial anymore.
The other thing to understand is this; really, it’s best to have both parents involved and working together, but the child can get by with one parent parenting properly.
So, what I suggest again in such a case is to find a good child behavior program that focuses on building relationships that is designed for Oppositional Defiant Disorder children, and enroll in that program. Our program, How to Improve Your Childs Behavior is such a program. This program is located at http://addadhdadvances.com/betterbehavior.html. There are probably other programs that will also help you with such a situation.
