Must-Know Information About Oppositional-Defiant Disordered Children and Adolescents
By: Ruth Herman Wells
If you are a counselor who finds that “nothing works”
to manage some students, this article may help. It’s also
the perfect article to pass to teachers and parents to help
them better grasp the key ideas behind a diagnosis of ODD,
Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
This article is just the start. Be aware that this
primer gives you just part of what you will
need to know to maintain control and best assist
ODD-challenged youngsters.
WHAT DOES “OPPOSITIONAL-DEFIANT” MEAN?
“Oppositional-Defiant” is a mental health diagnosis that
describes kids that have consciences but sometimes act
like they don’t. This diagnosis can only be applied by
a mental health professional but will be very important
for any youth worker to know and understand. This
diagnosis is far more hopeful than “conduct disorder,”
which means the child lacks a conscience and a real
capacity for relationships. While the oppositional-
defiant child (ODD) may also appear to have little
conscience or relationship capacity, you may be able to
improve that with the right approach and methods. With
conduct disordered youth, such improvement may not
be possible.
** WHAT DOES “OPPOSITIONAL-DEFIANCE” LOOK LIKE?
Oppositional-defiant kids are often some of your most
misbehaved students. They may disrupt your class,
hurt others, defy authority and engage in illegal
or problematic conduct. Though they may look similar
to conduct disorders, their bad behavior is usually
less severe, less frequent, and of shorter duration.
The ODD label is often inaccurately applied as this
dynamic can be a difficult concept to grasp and apply.
Many ADD youth are also ODD, and boys dominate
this category.
**THE 3 AREAS OF HELP FOR ODD YOUTH
The thrust of helping the ODD child must focus on
1) Skill building, plus 2)”Pulling up” that
conscience and 3)Improving their relationship skills.
For skill building, teaching them how to regulate their
anger, actions, peer skills, verbal output, etc. will
be critical. But equally important, this child must
be aided to care about others and to be guided more
by conscience. These are areas we cover extensively in
our live and taped workshops, but here are a few of the
most effective interventions we give especially for ODD
children and teens. These interventions will only focus
on stimulating that conscience or “compensating” for it.
If you want more than the handful of ideas given here,
or, you want to see how to build skills or
relationship capacity, the other two crucial aspects
to concentrate on with ODD kids, then consider coming
to our class or getting some of our books that will
deliver hundreds of the solutions you need.
**STRATEGIES TO STIMULATE THE CONSCIENCE OF ODD KIDS
*** To help “pull up” the child’s conscience, use
this intervention. It can be used pro-actively or
reactively (before or after the child has engaged in
misbehavior.) For example, let’s say the child has
stolen the teacher’s pen, you can say “I want you to
imagine that we’re making a video about your life.
Are you impressed?” That “uncomfortable sensation that
the child may have in reaction to this intervention may
be the conscience stirring.
*** Another intervention to stimulate the conscience:
after the child has engaged in a problem behavior, such
as stealing a pen, as in the example above, ask the
child, “So what’s your integrity worth to you?”
*** To adapt the intervention shown above for young
children, simply rephrase the question to “So what’s
people believing in you, worth to you?” Or, rephrase
it to “So what’s people trusting you, worth to you?”
*** Before a child undertakes a problem behavior, ask
the youth to imagine that s/he will read about that
act on the cover of the local newspaper in the morning.
Ask the child their reaction. If they say that they
wouldn’t want to read about it in the newspaper, the next
morning, then you can say “Then don’t do it!” This
image makes a fast and easy guide for kids to
follow to evaluate whether or not to do questionable
behaviors. This intervention is a good choice to use
with children whose conscience provides little guidance.
Remember: you’ve just gotten a tiny portion of the
information you need on ODD students. Please be sure to
read more, go to a training, or otherwise update your
skills. There is no substitute for getting the tools
you need for your office. Read more details on ODD
and be sure you know about CD (Conduct Disorder)
at our site: http://www.youthchg.com/hottopic.html.
©Copyright 2008 by Ruth Herman Wells. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.