How To Deal With Child With ODD

Oppositional Defiant Disorder is what O-D-D stands for. How do you deal with a child who has ODD. First of all, is that really a diagnosis? Seriously Dr. Paul? Is that…? Yes. It is actually. It’s in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And that kind of is weird to me too. But I’ve got the criteria here that I want to share with you. How to diagnose someone who’s got Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Here’s how its described. First… There’s 3 components here, okay?

The first is an angry, irritable mood. And there are 3 sub points after that. Listen to these.

Number 1 often loses temper.

Number 2 is often touchy or easily annoyed.

Number 3 is often angry and resentful.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking here. Because your kid probably does this. Yeah, I probably do this. Disclaimer right up front. For any diagnosis we use for children that involves behavior and most of them do. We have to distinguish between what’s normal or expected for a child of that age versus what’s out of the ordinary or bigger than what we would normally expect for a child that age.

Every child is going to go through periods or phases where these things are true for them. To make the diagnosis, it has to be more than what we would normally expect. And it has to persist for I think at least 6 months in order to make the diagnosis.

So, with that disclaimer, let’s go back to the diagnostic criteria. The first one as I pointed out is the angry irritable mood. Now, let’s go to the second category. Argumentative / defiant behavior. And there are 4 points under that as well.

Often argues with authority figures or for children and adolescence with adults.

Often actively defies or refuses to comply with requests from authority figures or with rules. Now again, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, that’s my kid.” Yeah, it probably is because most kids do this. But remember, we’re talking bigger than or more than would be normally expected for a child that age.

If you don’t have a lot of experience with other children, that are the age of your own, then withhold judgment for a while because maybe this is pretty normal for kids. But if it’s becoming a problem or interfering with their life, their education their ability to relate to people, that’s when we’re starting to take a little more notice of it. So, let’s go back to the criteria. There’s 2 more under argumentative and defiant behavior. Often deliberately annoys others and finally often blames others for his or her mistakes or behavior.

Isn’t this fun? That’s why we call it Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Alright, there’s one more category that I want to share with you from the criteria.

Vindictiveness. And this is described as has been spiteful or vindictive at least 2 within the past 6 months.

And then it goes into a whole disclaimer that I already shared with you about how this is above average. This is out of the ordinary. It’s more than we would expect for a child of that age and development. So, what do we do about it? Let’s say that your child is experiencing those criteria as I described into in the first part of the video.

And it does seem to be more than you would normally expect for a child of that age development. What can you do about it? We got 5 tips for you. Let’s start with this one. Try to identify the sources of frustration.

Check it out, we all do this. In fact, as human beings, our frustration often leads us to an acceleration of those feelings that we… That can be described as anger or defiance.

Probably your child is feeling frustrated about something. I’ve noticed this in just normal development of my own kids that sometimes when they’re going into a new developmental stage or they have a developmental milestone that they’re about to meet, they start to experience an increase in frustration.

This can lead to behavioral problems for a child. So as a parent, just push the pause button long enough to say, “Hmm, I wonder if my child is feeling frustrated.” That’s a little softer to deal with than the harshness of Oppositional and Defiant.

So, let’s break away from the diagnosis enough to realize that there’s probably some frustration happening. Here’s my second tip. Simplify your family rules. A lot of kids who are struggling with Oppositionality and defiance. Don’t wrap their heads around all of the rules and regulations and expectations that are coming up for them.

Let’s see if we can simplify it for them. And I really like three in particular. Let’s see if you agree with these. Rule number 1 respect yourself and others. This is a family rule.

Mom and dad are going to follow this rule, all the kids are going to follow this rule. This is an important part of our family culture. What does it mean to respect yourself and others? And then you can have a conversation with the kids about this. I would suggest that you do it in some kind of a family meeting or come together for a family council our family home evening of some kind to establish these family rules.

And you can ask them what it means to respect yourself. What does it mean to respect others? Have those conversations. Here’s rule number 2, respect property. We’ve already established the importance of respect.

Now let’s extend that to our property, our things. Taking care of things in the way that you should. Never vandalizing or intentionally breaking or damaging or harming people’s property.

This is important. Taking care of your own property.

You like those rules so far? Respect self and others, respect property. What else could we want as parents? That’s pretty well covering it. But I’ve got a third one for you that catches all of the loose ends.

Cooperate and obey. That’s family rule number 3. And that picks up everything that you might be concerned about that wasn’t covered in the first 2 rules. Now, let’s move to tip number 3. Tip number 3 is for you as a parent to remember the 3 rules for a power struggle.

Oppositional Defiant children typically get into a lot of power struggles. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? So as a parent, you get to follow 3 rules for power struggles. Let’s talk about those 3. Number 1, avoid them.

Not your child. The power struggles. Avoid them. Don’t get into them unless you need to. Unless you absolutely have to.

It’s kind of like before marching up a hill. You got to decide, “Am I willing to die on that hill before I March up there into battle?” Be very selective in that way. Avoid the power struggles if you can. Rule number 2, if you can’t avoid them, win them.

I would tell the same thing to your kids, too. But they’re already really good at this rule. Because they know how to win a power struggle because they know rule number 3. You pick the issues. Notice that if you pick the issues, you’re going to have a whole lot easier time actually winning the power struggle.

You never pick something that they control. That’s a recipe for disaster. You always pick something that you control.

Let me give you an example. Your child is swearing, okay?

Yelling out profanities. This happens a little bit with ODD.

So, your kid is yelling disrespectful language. Don’t get into a power struggle over his language. You don’t control that.
You might instead say, “Look, you can say whatever you feel is appropriate to say. I have some limits about profanity. And so if you choose to use profanity in this home then you will lose access to the game system.” For example. Now, can you win that power struggle?

Yes, you can. Because you can enforce whether he has access to the game system. That’s what I’m talking about. Don’t get into a power struggle about his language.

That’s up to him.

You might want to choose to control the game system instead. You see? So, those are the 3 year rules for the power struggles. Now, let’s go to tip number 4. When we’re dealing with children who have Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
Establish a family culture of positivity. This is easier said than done. And this is part of what this whole channel is all about. You go to the playlist here for positive parenting or for positive personal development. You will get all kinds of ideas from the videos that we’ve put out before about how to create this culture.

The culture of positivity has everyone in the whole family taking a more positive position about what’s going on in the family. And it sets us up to move forward to the next step. Which is to create some powerful upgrades. Because even though this family culture the way it is, is really awesome. It could be better, yeah.

So, we set up a family culture of positivity. Now, one final tip about how to deal with children who have Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

And it has to do with you and your particular example and model to them. Here’s how I’m going to phrase it. Be calm and parent on.

This is the time for you to show them how to regulate and monitor your own feelings and emotions. So that you’re not flying off the handle. It can be really frustrating. Honestly, if your kids are oppositional and defiant, it might trigger things in you to where you want to react in a way that’s not going to help the situation. I tell you what, if you as a parent are yelling and screaming for your child to stop yelling and screaming, there’s something wrong with that equation.

And I’ll let you do the math. Be calm and parent on. Show and model the kind of behavior that you would like to see in your child. Maybe that one goes without saying, “But there I go. I went and said it.” Because I think we need to know that and focus on it and remember it as a parent. One last thing there. This is even more important when our kids are upset.

Because they don’t know yet how to regulate their own affect as well as you do. Be that model for them.

Honestly, I’m not even sure that Oppositional Defiant Disorder should be a diagnosis. It is something that we can deal with however. And hopefully that’s some good ideas from this video. If you haven’t connected yet with the Parenting Power-Up, Vicki and I’ve put a lot of tools into that but I think we’re going to find very helpful. And you’ll have constant access there to the 18 modules that are already there any updates that we create.

Go to parentingpower-up.com. You can connect to it right over there.

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