Looking for advice on coping with a 8-year old child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)?

Question

I have finally taken my 8 year old daughter to a counseling center to begin treatment for Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). She always been a tempramental child, stubborn, crying kicking yelling because she doesn't get what she wants. It has escalated in the last year or so to telling me no!, hitting, kicking and breaking stuff. So, I concluded 8 years old is much too old for this behaviour, and if I wait much longer, I won't be able to get her under control.

She was officially diagnosed this week. We have barely started treatment, so I don't have a lot of advice to go on from her counselor. Tonight we just had a terrible time, because she wanted some extra markers (that I am saving for when she needs them at school), and I would not let her have them. Kicking screaming, refusing to go to her room, being physically carried four times to her room...and nasty sassy mouth.

Any experience with this type of behaviour? What has worked for you? How do you handle the tantrums?

Re: Spanking
I wish it were that easy, I know the difference between spanking and beating...that said, the spanking route has been tried, but it does not work...two days later, we are back to the same temper tantrum...and I have two other girls (one is her twin) and they are good natured, know when mom says no, no is the answer. *sigh*

Answer 1

What exactly is the course of treatment for ODD?

My husbands supervisors daughter was just put on Prozac for this type of behaviour and it has help IMMENSELY!!! She is about your daughters age also.

SHE would get on top of the teachers desk and threaten the teacher with a chair!!! Not LISTENING at home was a HUGE problem.

They were VERY reluctant at first then decided what the heck we have tried everything else why not try this approach!

IT WORKED WONDERS FOR THEM THIS SUMMER! Their daughter is a different child!!!

There are MANY different programs out there that CAN help. We did therapy with Juvenile Services.We did a "Strengthening Families" program at Child & Family Services this past summer.

The "Strengthening Families" on was SUPER. My kids learned that MOM does things for the family that she doesn't necessiarily LIKE to do!

We learned about LOVE & LOGIC. LISTENING to our kids. LIMITS, and when to take away things that are important to the kids! Rather than hitting, spanking or yelling at them!

With ME I ignore tantrums. I just walk away and let them vent THEN discipline when they are finished. OR count to 10 OR walk away & come back when I am not SO ANGRY at them!

Answer 2

I have noticed this as well. Once in a while you will see it the other way though. But most times black mothers and white fathers the children tend to have more white features. While white mothers and black fathers the children tend to look darker with coiled hair. Always make me feel bad for the white mother who have to comb the hair.

Answer 3

If at all possible, video tape her tantrums and let the doctor see them. This could possibly help the doctor help you and your daughter.

Good Luck

Answer 4

To me, that is more like Big Rotten Attention Trouble disorder...or better know as B.R.A.T.....the cure is easy...she needs big dose of spanking...but of course...you will go to jail over trying to discipline her..there ain't nothing wrong with her that whipping her wouldn't help...'spare the rod and spoil the child...' thank the government for your problems now... Temper tantrums should have been ignored..and now, since she has her 'diagnosis' she is really going to use it on you...what a shame..

Answer 5

have you thought of tryin reverse phscology?
chidren do it because they kno they are incontrol and they know their parents will give them anything to shut them up.have you tried being the child and do wat she did mabey shell think you are funny and dumb acting then explain to her that she is doin the same thing.do you use the word no in her dictionary?

Answer 6

An adult has certain rights around children which the children and modern adults rather tend to ignore. A good, stable adult with love and tolerance in his heart is about the best therapy a child can have.

The main consideration in raising children is the problem of training them without breaking them. You want to raise your child in such a way that you don’t have to control him, so that he will be in full possession of himself at all times. Upon that depends his good behavior, his health, his sanity.

Children are not dogs. They can’t be trained like dogs are trained. They are not controllable items. They are, and let’s not overlook the point, men and women. A child is not a special species of animal distinct from man. A child is a man or a woman who has not attained full growth.

Any law which applies to the behavior of men and women applies to children.

How would you like to be pulled and hauled and ordered about and restrained from doing whatever you wanted to do? You’d resent it. The only reason a child “doesn’t” resent it is because he’s small. You’d half murder somebody who treated you, an adult, with the orders, contradiction and disrespect given to the average child. The child doesn’t strike back because he isn’t big enough. He gets your floor muddy, interrupts your nap, destroys the peace of the home instead. If he had equality with you in the matter of rights, he’d not ask for this “revenge.” This “revenge” is standard child behavior.

A child has a right to his self-determinism. You say that if he is not restrained from pulling things down on himself, running into the road, etc., etc., he’ll be hurt. What are you, as an adult, doing to make that child live in rooms or an environment where he can be hurt? The fault is yours, not his, if he breaks things.

The sweetness and love of a child is preserved only so long as he can exert his own self-determinism. You interrupt that and, to a degree, you interrupt his life.

There are only two reasons why a child’s right to decide for himself has to be interrupted - the fragility and danger of his environment and you. For you work out on him the things that were done to you, regardless of what you think.

When you give a child something, it’s his. It’s not still yours. Clothes, toys, quarters, what he has been given must remain under his exclusive control. So he tears up his shirt, wrecks his bed, breaks his fire engine. It’s none of your business. How would you like to have somebody give you a Christmas present and then tell you, day after day thereafter, what you are to do with it, and even punish you if you failed to care for it the way the donor wishes? You’d wreck that donor and ruin that present. You know you would. The child wrecks your nerves when you do it to him. That’s revenge. He cries. He pesters you. He breaks your things. He “accidentally” spills his milk. And he wrecks the possession, on purpose, about which he is so often cautioned. Why? Because he is fighting for his own self-determinism, his own right to own and make his weight felt on his environment. This “possession” is another channel by which he can be controlled. So he has to fight the possession and the controller.

In raising your child you must avoid “training” him into a social animal. Your child begins by being more sociable, more dignified than you are. In a relatively short time, the treatment he gets so checks him that he revolts. This revolt can be intensified until he is a terror to have around. He will be noisy, thoughtless, careless of possessions, unclean - anything, in short, which will annoy you. Train him, control him and you’ll lose his love. You’ve lost the child forever that you seek to control and own.

Permit a child to sit on your lap. He’ll sit there, contented. Now put your arms around him and constrain him to sit there. Do this, even though he wasn’t even trying to leave. Instantly, he’ll squirm. He’ll fight to get away from you. He’ll get angry. He’ll cry. Recall now, he was happy before you started to hold him. You should actually make this experiment.

Your efforts to mold, train, control this child in general react on him exactly like trying to hold him on your lap.

Of course you will have difficulty if this child of yours has already been trained, controlled, ordered about, denied his own possessions. In midflight, you change your tactics. You try to give him his freedom. He’s so suspicious of you, he will have a terrible time trying to adjust. The transition period will be terrible. But at the end of it, you’ll have a well-ordered, well-trained, social child, thoughtful of you and, very important to you, a child who loves you.

The child who is under constraint, shepherded, handled, controlled, has a very bad anxiety postulated. His parents are survival entities. They mean food, clothing, shelter, affection. This means he wants to be near them. He wants to love them, naturally, being their child.

But on the other hand his parents are nonsurvival entities. His whole being and life depend upon his rights to use his own decision about his movements and his possessions and his body. Parents seek to interrupt this out of the mistaken idea that a child is an idiot who won’t learn unless “controlled.” So he has to fight shy, to fight against, to annoy and harass an enemy.

Here is anxiety. “I love them dearly. I also need them. But they mean an interruption of my ability, my mind, my potential life. What am I going to do about my parents? I can’t live with them. I can’t live without them. Oh, dear, oh, dear!” there he sits running this problem through his head. That problem, that anxiety, will be with him for eighteen years, more or less. And it will half wreck his life.
Freedom for the child means freedom for you.

Abandoning the possessions of the child to their fate means eventual safety for the child’s possessions.

What terrible willpower is demanded of a parent not to give constant streams of directions to a child!

But it has to be done, if you want a well, a happy, a careful, a beautiful, an intelligent child!
Another thing is the matter of contribution. You have no right to deny your child the right to contribute. A human being feels able and competent only so long as he is permitted to contribute as much or more than he has contributed to him.

A baby contributes by trying to make you smile. The baby will show off. A little older he will dance for you, bring you sticks, try to repeat your work motions to help you. If you don’t accept those smiles, those dances, those sticks, those work motions in the spirit they are given, you have begun to interrupt the child’s contribution. Now he will start to get anxious. He will do unthinking and strange things to your possessions in an effort to make them “better” for you. You scold him. That finishes him. The child has a duty toward you. He has to be able to take care of you, not an illusion that he is, but actually. And you have to have patience to allow yourself to be cared for sloppily until, by sheer experience itself - not by your directions - he learns how to do it well. Care for the child? Nonsense. He has probably got a better grasp of immediate situations than you have.

Answer 7

thats nothing a good old fashioned spanking cant fix...