Today, I want to discuss you.  What I mean by that is that I want to discuss you, as a parent.

Many parents who have ODD children or ADHD children, or otherwise difficult children, feel very bad about themselves, feel very ineffective as parents and feel helpless in many ways.  I want to dispel some of these negative feelings that you might be having.

Firstly, you have to understand one thing.  No child comes to the world completely blank.  Children come in with certain personality traits, certain problems, certain skills and certain abilities and that combination makes up your child.

There are some children that are easy to raise and some children are hard to raise.  The truth is that ODD children, ADHD children, and other children with other problems are much more difficult to raise than the normal, average child without any problems at all.

You might be getting a lot of negative feelings from people around you about your childs behavior and your inability to be an effective parent, but I would say in many cases, if not most cases it is not fair.

Parents who complain about others parenting skills do not have the same tests and trials and difficult children that you have.  The behavior of an ODD child whose parent is very, very good will be much worse than the behavior of a normal easily controlled child whose parent is not as good and skilled.

I will give you a couple of examples of this.  We had our children evaluated by the school psychologist .   He had already evaluated my first two children in previous years.  I remember when he finished evaluating my third child, he came out and said to me,This one is much easier, isnt he?  And he was.  My third child is a very easy child and my first two children were very difficult.  It is not a reflection of my parenting skills.   It is the way it is.  My children have different basic natures.

Once we were at a gathering with another family, and this same child who was an easy child was playing with another child of the same age, and they were getting kind of wild.  The father said to me that this child of his is the wildest child he has.  I told him, “he is my calmest child.”  It was true.  He has very calm children and I have very wild children.   But again, you cannot compare the two families and cannot compare parenting skills.

As a parent you must understand one thing.  If your child is not behaving properly, if he has ODD or ADHD, this is not an excuse for you not to address the behavior problems.  You have to get the parenting skills you need.  You have to get guidance that addresses these issues specifically.

Here is something else you must know.  If your child is under twelve, you need a specific behavior program for children under twelve.  If he between twelve to eighteen years old, you  need a  teen behavior program.  You cannot use the same techniques.  Don’t waste your money on a program that blends the two together and tries to give you advice on both age groups.

You should understand also that if you address the problems correctly, you are doing your job as a parent and accepting the child as he is.  Your child’s behavior is not a reflection of you or your parenting skills.

If you have an ODD child, you should feel very proud of your child and of your ability as a parent if you succeed in getting your child to improve his behavior even a little bit.  It is not an easy task.  If you have a hard child, no one can really blame you for that.  If they do, it is their problem and not your problem.

Out of control behavior in children and teens is a very common and distressing problem for parents.  Although it can be very stressful and confusing, here are a few tips that will help you know what to do about it.

As discussed previously, bad behavior is a result of a learned response.  This means that the child spontaneously for some reason acted inappropriately when he was young- he threw a tantrum or broke things, etc.- and as a result of the behavior the adults around him gave in to the childs desires.  They either gave in because it was a bad time for them or because they were too embarrassed by the behavior to deal with it.

Whatever the reason, if this happened often enough the child would realize that he can get what he wants by acting inappropriately.  In other words, the child learned a special technique that he can get what he wants if his behavior is disruptive.

Bad behavior is not an inborn.  It is learned.  You have to un-teach the behavior and you have to do it immediately.  Here is the reason why.

As your child gets older, he is going to want more things, bigger things, more dangerous things.  He will learn that if you give in to bad behavior all he has to do is escalate the behavior and he will eventually get what he wants.  That will make your life very difficult.  It will disrupt your peaceful home environment.

This is why many parents have such a hard time with defiant teens.  Since early childhood these children learned that they can use their inappropriate behavior to get their parents to give in.   Teens often become more aggressive with their behavior.  They will break walls, punch through doors, and break windows.  These teens also use all sorts of abusive and cursing language.

Defiant children understand that bad behavior is an effective technique to get what they want.  Remember, though, it is a learned technique.  You have to un-teach your child by not giving in to abusive behavior.   It is not a hard thing to do, but it is not a pleasant thing to do either.

Also, this is not something you can do gradually.  It is not a weaning process.  Your decision not to give in to your child’s tantrums and abusive behavior must be absolute.

Your child’s first response will be to escalate the behavior.  It is critical at that point not to give in.  When your child acts out, you must hold your ground.

Eventually, your child will understand that acting out is no longer an effective way of getting what he wants.  He will stop acting out.  However, until he has that realization, he is going to escalate his behavior though.  Be prepared for this.

A key thing to remember is that you should not get into a battle or a conflict with your child if you are not able to follow through.  That means if you have to run out for an appointment, or if you have an important phone call, or for some reason you cannot sit it out, wait it out, and endure whatever your child is going to do, you should not get involved in the conflict.  The worst thing you can do is to begin to make a stand and then back down.  By backing down you are encouraging your child to escalate the negative behavior.

Again, it cannot be stressed enough that this bad, abusive, and out of control behavior in children and teens is a learned process.  And because it is a learned behavior, you must un-teach your child.

The unlearning process is a hard one.  You will experience a lot of unpleasantness.  However, you must go through with it because if you do not, your child’s behavior is going to get worse over time. These behavior problems will not go away or get better by themselves.

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.