Teaching Oppositional Defiant (ODD) Students

My daughter has ODD and been suspended 9 times this year. Her school doesn't seem to be giving her any support, just suspending her. She is getting really upset as she thinks everyone is giving up on her. What can the school do to help?

`````````````````````````````

Teaching Oppositional Defiant (ODD) Students—

If you are a teacher who finds that "nothing works" to manage some students, this article may help. It's way past time for you to learn about ODD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

In college, you probably got very little training on basic mental health, but if you've been teaching for more than five minutes, you know that little bit of training wasn't enough. Here's just a quick peek at what they should have taught you in college about basic juvenile mental health.

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.

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.

Educational Implications—

Students with ODD may consistently challenge the class rules, refuse to do assignments, and argue or fight with other students. This behavior can cause significant impairment in both social and academic functioning. The constant testing of limits and arguing can create a stressful classroom environment.

Instructional Strategies & Classroom Accommodations—

• Allow sharp demarcation to occur between academic periods but hold transition times between periods to a minimum.
• Allow students to redo assignments to improve their score or final grade.
• Ask parents what works at home.
• Avoid “infantile” materials to teach basic skills. Materials should be positive and relevant to students’ lives.
• Avoid making comments or bringing up situations that may be a source of argument for them.
• Establish clear classroom rules. Be clear about what is nonnegotiable.
• Give 2 choices when decisions are needed. State them briefly and clearly.
• Make sure academic work is at the appropriate level. When work is too hard, students become frustrated. When it is too easy, they become bored. Both reactions lead to classroom problems.
• Maximize the performance of low-performing students through the use of individualized instruction, cues, prompting, the breaking down of academic tasks, and debriefing, coaching, and providing positive incentives.
• Minimize downtime and plan and transitions carefully. Students with ODD do best when kept busy.
• Pace instruction. When students with ODD have completed a designated amount of a non-deferred activity, reinforce their cooperation by allowing them to do something they prefer or find more enjoyable or less difficult.
• Post the daily schedule so students know what to expect.
• Praise students when they respond positively.
• Provide consistency, structure, and clear consequences for the students’ behavior.
• Remember that students with ODD tend to create power struggles. Try to avoid these verbal exchanges. State your position clearly and concisely. Choose your battles wisely.
• Select material that encourages student interaction. Students with ODD need to learn to talk to peers and to adults in an appropriate manner. However, all cooperative learning activities must be carefully structured.
• Structure activities so the student with ODD is not always left out.
• Systemically teach social skills, including anger management, conflict resolution strategies, and how to be assertive in an appropriate manner. Discuss strategies that the students may use to calm themselves when they feel anger escalating. Do this when students are calm.

JOIN Online Parent Support

Parents & Power Struggles

We see the main problem is he has turned on us... he is angry and is baiting us... he just came in from soccer and hit me with a tirade of swearing. He was angry because he wanted takeaway food and he was told that there was food at home. He has now taken off – it is 11pm. How do we make him realise that he needs to conform to our rules. He has no friends and we are the only people who support him. The punching of the walls and threatening to tell people that his father rapes him etc are just his way of punishing us. Will keeping the screws on him keep making the situation worse or will it eventually break him?

Click here for my response...

Why are so many children becoming violent and committing murder?

Mark-

My question is: Why are children so violent these days. We had a murder here (15-year-old killed a 17-year-old after school)... and now this threat in our small town school !

Why are so many children becoming violent …why are so many committing murder?

J.

````````````````````````````````````

Hi J.,

The reasons for the rise in kids committing murder are multi-faceted. You can't blame it on the school, and you can't blame it on the family, the breakdown of religion or the availability of guns. It is not that simple. It is usually a combination of things. Behavior is multi-determined.

There are a lot of different reasons for behavior. However, some aspects of gang-related violence suggest that some kids are very psychopathic. They are just criminally-minded kids. The way some kids solve conflict is with weapons. Some kids are young predators. Also, kids tend to murder in groups. Remember, teenagers tend to do everything together. For example, if one guy visits his girlfriend, he's got to bring five other people with him.

We know that most juvenile crime is committed between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., which highlights the importance of having more adult mentors and after-school safe havens. We know that better-educated youths are less likely to commit violent crimes, which stresses the need for better schools and more talented teachers. We know that the increase in violent juvenile crime has been driven by the easy availability of guns, which stresses the importance of urging our political leaders to pass legislation to make handguns less accessible to our kids (and as a side note: I am not an anti-gun person).

One key reason to why so many kids are committing murder stems from society's love and fascination with violence. Unfortunately, violence is a major theme in the American culture. Even the national anthem refers to violence as associated with the American flag ...and the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof to the night that our flag was still there. When we see kids murdered or murdering, we should realize that they are a reflection of us and the culture in which we live and accept. Our kids are modeling our values and cultural practices. The culture needs cleansing and a rebirth of values enriched with spirituality.

Violence portrayed in the media can also contribute to kids who commit murder. Kids and adolescents endure continual diet images of violence while being entertained by various media.

Today's kids are growing up too fast and do not have proper adult supervision. It's almost as if kids are expected or socialized or forced to grow up too soon. They become ‘early-age adults’ or ‘hurried kids,’ meaning they are exposed to and internalize adult forms of behavior. There's a lack of adult supervision because so many adults are working, or there's only one parent in the house. I am not denouncing single-parent families, because there are adults who are not supervising properly in two-parent homes as well. There are after-school hours where kids are not supervised. Kids in some instances are supervising themselves. You don't have people around saying, `No, that is not appropriate.'

The lack of extended family and a lack of community networking is also a factor. Grandmas and aunties are two hours away; they are not as intricately involved as they were years ago.

Drugs, gangs and the easy availability of guns also play a role in kids committing murder. Younger and younger kids are getting involved in drugs. They are also reacting to the premium society places on material goods, like expensive sneakers and other apparel. They may become obsessed about dressing a certain way or having something they can't afford. But we have to look at what kind of family circumstances exist for that child, what kind of school circumstances peer relationships exist for that child.

The perception is that crime in America is a Black problem. But the data does not support that. Whites kill Whites; Whites rob Whites. There's no doubt that things have been happening in their communities, but until now they have been seen as isolated events. This problem with our kids is happening everywhere, in heartland America, suburbia and rural communities.

Poverty and racism may contribute to the reasons that Black youths are killing one another. If you talk to one of these kids and ask him, ‘Why did you shoot him?’ … He'll say, ‘Because he dissed me.’ Disrespect has become rationale for taking someone's life.

People living under conditions of oppression have very little control over their lives. The issue of respect becomes tantamount. You can't control your income, you can't control whether you have a job or the money to support you and your family, but you can control the degree to which people show you respect. You can demand respect, particularly among other oppressed Black people.

Too many youths, particularly those in gangs, see how racism makes it difficult to succeed in society. The real question is, “What does it mean to grow up as a Black child in the United States in a society that has been steeped in racism?” They know as young Black men they are likely to have fewer opportunities to get a job, to be able to support themselves and be allowed to become respected members of society. The feeling of inequality leads to rage and the young men seem to be saying, ‘If you are not going to let me legitimately join society, I will, in effect, become your worst nightmare. I will become precisely what you don't want me to be: an angry young Black man with a gun.’

Violence is also about power. It is a means of establishing yourself in a society where you feel powerless. And if you are living in a society where the penalty is very high in expressing your rage toward the oppressors, the oppressed will express their rage and violence to one another.

If you take troubled kids and add guns and add a precipitating event in a society that glamorizes explosive responses to anger, you've got danger.

We need to look at the families themselves to see what kind of stresses the parents are putting on the kids. We have to look at the parents' parents to see if there is a pattern of violence that might explain why kids are killing kids. Kids are becoming more callous. They don't care if they die or if they live. They don't see a future for themselves. When you ask them, ‘Where do you see yourself?’ …They say, ‘I don't know.’ They don't see a future for themselves.

JOIN Online Parent Support