When Hunter was a baby, Pat never imagined parenting him would mean becoming trapped in an argument that would last 15 years. From the time he was old enough to express himself, it seemed that he was looking for a fight with her.
“He’s a very strong-willed person,” says Pat, her polite demeanor belying an obvious understatement. “He’s manipulative, and he learned at a very young age how to make that work for him to get what he wanted.”
“The simplest things always seem to turn into huge problems because Hunter simply refuses to do what he is asked to do, whether it was brushing his teeth at age five, or raking the yard at age 15. The word ‘no’ lights his fuse, especially when in response to something he wants to do. He’s always doing these irritating things,” Pat explains, “as if he enjoys bothering you.”
Getting out of bed in the morning is the issue around which Hunter and his parents argue the most. “We’ve had the worst time in the world getting him up in the morning and into the shower. I know this is unbelievable, but he gets in the shower, stretches out in the bottom of the tub with the water beating on him, and goes back to sleep. From that moment on, we have to micromanage his morning to get him to the bus stop.”
Recently, Hunter was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Pat finally has a name for the behavior that’s been exhausting her all these years. Now, she needs a solution. How does a parent stop the arguments with a child whose primary way of communicating is arguing?
James Lehman:
A day with a child who has Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a series of battles in an undeclared war. It starts when they wake up, continues at breakfast, intensifies when they have to get dressed, and doesn’t end until they fight with you over bedtime.
Kids with ODD lose their temper quickly and often. They’re easily annoyed and frustrated by other people, resentful and hostile with adults, bossy and pushy with other kids. They blame everyone else for their difficulties and make excuses for their inability to cope. They gravitate toward negative peers and tend to be sulking, angry adolescents.
Unrestricted free time is a breeding ground for aggressive behavior for these children. In an unstructured environment, they become annoying, threatening or destructive to kids around them and to adult authority figures. They will use this time to deliberately antagonize anyone they see as “in charge.”
As a parent, you can’t satisfy a child with ODD, since their thinking is irrational. They clamor for your attention and then tell you to leave them alone. The sad truth is, kids with ODD aren’t very likeable. Parents often feel guilty about the fact that they love their kids, but don’t like being around them.
Parents get blamed for their child’s oppositional behavior and tend to heap even more blame on themselves. The parent of a child with ODD often feels incompetent and isolated. They live with the self-imposed shame that other people think they’re bad parents, and that humiliation grows larger as their world gets smaller. Left untreated, Oppositional Defiant Disorder can lead to Conduct Disorder, a more serious pathology that is a precursor for anti-social behavior and criminality.
Of course, for many parents, ODD is not the primary issue. Rather, they are dealing with continuous, low-level defiance that is not incendiary and aggressive, but is aggravating, annoying and disruptive to the family. Whether the defiance has turned into a diagnosis of ODD or has not, the parent’s approach should be the same.