Resources for Parents of Kids With Oppositional Defiant Disorder

If your child has been diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), a condition characterized by aggression and misbehavior, you may feel at a loss as to where to begin. It can also be daunting to wade through all the information to find what you both want and need to know.

That's why we wanted to provide a more complete group of resources for learning more, addressing specific behaviors, and getting support so you can best help your child with ODD. Let's begin with some basic information about this condition and how it's managed.

About Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Oppositional defiant disorder is a mental health disorder in which a child demonstrates aggression and purposeful misbehavior. Thought to affect between 3% and 5% of children, this behavior disorder is more common in boys than in girls.

ODD Symptoms

ODD involves a pattern of defiance, negativity, and hostility which is essentially constant and can create significant dysfunction at both home and school. Symptoms associated with oppositional defiant disorder include:

• Blames others for mistakes
• Excessively argues with adults and authority figures
• Frequent angry outbursts
• Is easily annoyed or provoked
• Purposefully annoys others
• Refuses to follow rules
• Vindictive or spiteful toward others

ODD symptoms can vary from mild to severe and usually arise during a child's preschool years, though they can also appear in adolescence.

ODD Causes

It's thought that ODD is caused by a combination of factors. Genetics can play a role, as can several parental factors, including unresponsive parenting, insecure attachment, parental nicotine use, nutritional deficiencies in utero, and maternal aggression.

ODD can and does develop in children from loving and stable families. However, it's not uncommon for children with this condition to come from a dysfunctional home life or be exposed to violence.

Conditions Co-Occurring With ODD

Oppositional defiant disorder may co-occur with other conditions, such as:

• Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Anxiety disorders
• Impulse control disorders
• Language disorders
• Mood disorders

What to Do After an ODD Diagnosis

When your child is first diagnosed with ODD, it's helpful to learn as much as you can about the disorder. Not only will this help you develop methods for coping with the behaviors, but it can also be reassuring to learn that a majority of children (two-thirds) outgrow it. Knowing this alone may give you more strength to cope with difficult behaviors today.

Find a Parenting Program

Parenting programs can be extremely helpful in getting you up-to-date on how to parent a child with ODD. Options include:

• Collaborative & Proactive Solutions
• Parent-Child Interaction Therapy
• The Incredible Years
  

Find a Therapist

Depending on who diagnosed your child, you may need to find a therapist who can walk beside you as you learn tools for managing your child's behavior. Therapy has been found to work well for children with ODD while reducing the chance that the condition will progress to conduct disorder later in childhood or antisocial personality disorder as an adult.

Ask your physician or therapist if they know anyone who specializes in treating children with ODD. Most commonly, this type of professional will be a child or adolescent psychiatrist, also known as a pediatric psychiatrist.

Don't be afraid to interview different providers. It's important to find an ally who can support you in helping your child. It can also be helpful to ask for recommendations in online support communities. Parents living with a child with ODD have often learned by trial and error and may offer valuable tips in finding the right professional.

How to Prepare Your Child's School

If your child is in school, it's important to meet with their teacher or others at the school who will be involved in their education. Combining a school-based program with therapy and positive parenting can help better manage ODD.

Special education services may help provide support and accommodations for your child. The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a federal law that mandates that children with disabilities be provided with services to allow them to function in the school setting.

This usually requires that the ODD impairs their academic performance. You can request an evaluation for your child at any time. If your child does not qualify for IDEA (usually under the "other health impaired" category), they may still qualify for an individual accommodation plan under Section 504.

Disciplining an ODD Child

How do you discipline a child with oppositional defiant disorder? Despite ample opportunities to give them negative attention, finding opportunities to provide positive attention instead can really help.

Even though negative consequences will likely be needed at times, positive attention is often more effective. Positive consequences seem to make negative consequences more effective when needed.

Avoiding harsh punishment and focusing on behaviors rather than the child is also helpful. The programs listed above can provide tips for working with a child with ODD.

Treatments for ODD

Treatment options found to be helpful for children with ODD include:

• Individual mental health therapy
• Family therapy
• Parent management therapy

There are no medications designed to treat oppositional defiant disorder specifically. That said, medication may be recommended if the child experiences severe aggression or has other co-occurring mental health disorders. Though, typically, therapy is effective on its own.

Living With a Child With ODD

Living with a child with oppositional defiant disorder can leave you on the edge and frustrated. It can be challenging to back up and view the behaviors as separate from your child and to stay calm.

Here are several tips for living with a child with ODD.

• Avoid power struggles. It might be best to ignore minor behavioral problems until you get major problems controlled. Said another way, "Pick your battles."
• Establish clear rules and consequences—keeping in mind that consequences are not the same as punishment.
• Give your child plenty of time for imaginative play and schedule daily doses of one-on-one time.
• Praise your child often and provide positive feedback. Reinforcing behaviors with positive attention may reduce the amount of negative attention their behavior requires.
• Model positive behaviors for your children, or "walk the walk."

Getting Professional Help

Even if you follow all of the tips above for parenting a child with ODD, you may still feel overwhelmed. Take a moment to think about when you should seek help for your child's behavior problems.

If your child's behavior problems aren't changing when you incorporate discipline strategies, if their behavior is interfering with school or their social life, or if their behavior is not age-appropriate, it's likely time to seek help.

Helpful ODD Resources for Parents

There are lots of resources available to help parents manage their child's ODD. Here are some places to start looking.

Websites

Websites that offer additional information and ideas for parents who have a child with ODD include:

• American Academy of Child & Adult Psychiatry
• Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
• Johns Hopkins Medicine
• National Federation of Families

As noted earlier, ODD often co-exists with other disorders such as ADHD. At times, the management of ODD is similar to that of ADHD but, at other times, it's important to distinguish between the two diagnoses. These sites focused on ADHD may offer assistance when your child has ODD as a co-existing condition:

• ADDitude Magazine
• National Resource Center on ADHD

Podcasts

If you like listening to podcasts, here are a few episodes to add to your playlist as they discuss ODD:

• Defuse Defiance: Treating Oppositional Defiant Disorder in Kids and Adults on the ADDitude podcast
• How Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) Ruptures Families—and How to Manage It on the ADDitude podcast
• ODD episodes on The Neurodiversity Podcast
• Using Behavior Skills with ADHD and ODD on the Smarter Parenting podcast
  

Books

There are also entire books devoted to helping parents cope with and care for a child with ODD. Books that may be helpful include:

• The Defiant Child: A Parent's Guide to Oppositional Defiant Disorder by Douglas Riley (published in 1997 but still very up-to-date)
• The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children by Ross W. Greene (2021)
• The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child by Alan E. Kazdin (2009)

Support for Parents of Children With ODD

Having the opportunity to talk with other parents living with a child with ODD can be priceless. No matter how thoughtful and understanding your family and friends are, there is something special about talking with others facing the same challenges.

In addition to emotional support, online support communities can help you learn about the latest findings and approaches to managing ODD. After all, there is nobody more motivated to understand the day-to-day life of a child with ODD than other parents.

Online support groups allow you to get understanding and advice from other parents around the world. There are a number of other online groups as well, such as Facebook groups designed to connect parents who are living with a child who has ODD.

Takeaways

Learning that your child has ODD can release a mass of mixed emotions. You may be relieved to finally have a diagnosis for your child's behavior, but at the same time fear what this means for the future.

As parents, an ODD diagnosis can also make you question your parenting skills. Yet, a sense of guilt and shame is counterproductive to learning how to meet your child's needs. There are many children raised in warm and loving family environments who nonetheless are diagnosed with ODD.

Once you have a diagnosis you can finally begin to address your child's behaviors. Talk to your physician. Find a good child or adolescent psychiatrist. Become involved in support groups. Rest just a bit in the realization that a majority of children "outgrow" these behaviors. That said, therapy can go a long way in reducing the chance your child's behaviors will persist.

Explore the tips above, and use the resources and links provided to educate and empower yourself as a parent of a child with ODD. You've got this, and we've got you.