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Having only read part of the article and having gone through toddler years with 2 kids having ADHD and ODD my only insights are: Get good at child psychology t

Having only read part of the article and having gone through toddler years with 2 kids having ADHD and ODD my only insights are: Get good at child psychology the art of manipulation. You're a team against the kids - keep up a united front, regardless of your marital situation. If you don't learn to manipulate those kids into doing what you want, they will very quickly learn to manipulate you into doing what they want. If you don't consistently maintain a united front, they will play one of you off against the other, every. single. time. and one of you will become the enemy they hate and the other their best friend. This isn't fair to the parent that ends up the enemy and is detrimental to their relationship. Some kids are easy going laid back and compliant. Most of them have their own free will and will largely do what they want, regardless of what you want them to. Get used to not having complete control at all times, because if you try and maintain control at all times, one thing I can guarantee is that your kids will feel powerless and ultimately begin to despise you. Give them compassion and understanding and try to give them enough rope to run without hanging themselves. YouTube has plenty enough videos to scare the crap out of them from doing stupid shit that will hurt or kill them. It's also got a great many videos that will inspire and educate them. It's a great tool. Use it as liberally as you need. I can count on one hand the number of times my kids have been spanked. They're now 8 and almost 7. Those spankings yielded almost zero result and reflects more on my inability to maintain control of myself under the stress they put me under than their behaviour. All it did was exacerbate already intolerable behaviour. Did they deserve it? Yes. Did it yield the result I wanted? No. Should I have held my temper? Probably. The fact that it didn't yield the result I wanted says it was a futile exercise. It didn't teach them anything, they didn't respect me for it, they feared me for it. Do I want my kids to fear me? Absolutely not. Plus, they were some age less than 8 and 6. They're expected to act out. They're kids. I'm an adult, I should be able to control myself better - and I largely do. No amount of framing decisions to stimulate cooperation work. No amount of forcing them to comply works. Neither one of them seem to have any sense of guilt unless they think they've really hurt you and you show them real honest vulnerability... and you can't show that card too often or they'll just think you're unable to stand up for yourself and then they'll never learn to respect you. Okay, so there's not so much advice there. But I'll tell you, every kid is different. Some tools work on some and have counter effects on others. You need an arsenal of techniques and you need to pick and choose them for each situation, like a Marine, you don't take the same tools into every operation, you pick the best tool in your arsenal to complete your mission. Sometimes spanking will work on some kids, other times it will just make the situation ten times worse. Sometimes timeout will work, other times it'll just drag out the torture for both of you. Sometimes shutting down the argument and dictating how things are going to happen is the only way. Other times, you just have to pick your battles and say to yourself - does the outcome of this situation even really matter? Why do I feel the need to argue and enforce my will here? If you're worried about how they dress reflects on you, let them watch shows like "What not to wear" so they learn a sense of style. But honestly, they're kids, does it really matter? Their friends will tell them if they look like an idiot. Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing. Sometimes the easiest path is just relinquishing control of everything inconsequential and only controlling the things that really matter: Don't let them hurt or kill themselves or anyone else and don't let them damage or destroy anything that doesn't belong to them.

GrinningFool 10y ago
>> having ADHD and ODD I strongly suspect that we're looking at the same combination in our son. Sadly I'm reluctant to take my concerns to a medical professional because ODD has a strong correlation with abuse. While I've no doubt that some of my and my wife's parenting has contributed to this, abuse isn't happening -- it's literally been his personality since he could first talk. Still, it's enough to make me uncomfortable going into a situation where that's the assumption[1] Was yours a medical diagnosis - and if so, did you run into any troubles around that aspect? > If you're worried about how they dress reflects on you, This raises an interesting problem though. I find I'm reinforcing societal norms that aren't consistent with my own - because I'm aware that he has to function among peers and adults every day in a social environment. Their reactions to negative behavior aren't enough to prevent him from doing it. Encouragingly, the couple of situations I've explained that for [in simplified form] have resulted in major improvement (such as using 'inappropriate' language - I personally think it's fine if you know the meanings and usage of the words and when it's ok to use them, regardless of age. After explaining that other adults and parents didn't view it that way, and that it means they won't want him playing with their children and will think poorly of us as a family, that particular problem stopped.) > Sometimes the easiest path is just relinquishing control of everything inconsequential and only controlling the things that really matter: Don't let them hurt or kill themselves or anyone else and don't let them damage or destroy anything that doesn't belong to them. This, as a lesson slowly being learned.
- balabaster 10y ago
  With regards to the medical diagnosis - this is the back story, sorry it's a little long winded: So our eldest was born with 2 holes in her heart. She is the one suffering ODD. She was a difficult baby from the very outset, she wouldn't feed and was in hospital for the first 3 months of her life with her mother living in with her and me providing relief outside of work so she could get some much needed rest so it was a round the clock affair for 3 months until she was released just in time for Christmas. Of course this took a toll on everyone involved. She went round after round of tests, had a feeding tube and had to be fed through this every 2 hours, after which she would guarantee to throw up and need changing and cry the entire time and need to be carried around the halls of the hospital to attempt to stem the constant crying. While my daughter won't be able to remember any of this, it would be remiss to assume there was no psychological trauma left. Fast forward 4 years and she had to go in for open heart surgery. She was old enough to understand what was happening and while we were as gentle as we could be, we couldn't shield her from the truth and we kept up a positive strength with her to help bolster a confidence in her that we lacked ourselves. To say this was traumatic is an understatement and I think all of us share in that trauma - some of which remains to this day. The killer was when she asked how we could have abandoned her at the hospital to be cut open like that... if you ever want to feel like you were cut in two and had your beating heart ripped out of your chest - that was that moment. We were by her side throughout, but there is trauma that she most definitely needs help with. In fact, in many ways, I think there is trauma all round that we'd benefit from help with. We resisted for ages going for medical diagnosis because we didn't want to be "those parents" - you know, the ones that medicate their kids because they just can't cope with kids being kids. We asked ourselves many times if this behaviour was just normal kids and that our perspective was just skewed. In the end we went in to the hospital after our eldest had a throw down tantrum where she was looking like she was going to cause serious physical damage that lasted for too long to ignore and we sat down with the psychiatrist and said to them - we're not looking for medication, we're not looking for her to get a psychiatrist, we want real honest to God unbiased, objective advice on her behaviour and if this is normal and our perspective is whacked or if she needs medical assistance. We all did questionnaires, her school teachers did questionnaires - we were very forthright with the teachers and told them what was going on and what we were experiencing at home and asked them for their input and gave them our support. One thing I learned from this is that most teachers won't raise their concerns with parents because more often than not, parents will come back with the attitude "that's your job, they're our problem at home, when they're at school they're your problem" or if the teacher raises the prospect of the fact that your child may have something that needs to be dealt with professionally, parents get defensive. Our going to the teachers I think was liberating for everyone involved - the teachers thanked us for our support and have been incredibly incredibly supportive with us in return. Anyway, after a week under observation at the in-patient psychological wing of the hospital and having in-class support at school, it was determined that our first does indeed have at least ADHD and suspected ODD. Is there stigma? Yes. Does it affect how she's treated at school, to an extent yes, but on the whole the staff have been amazing and collaborative with us. Building a relationship with them helps a huge amount. Frequently the problem kids that you hear about being ostracized and mistreated are because the teachers have little choice but to remove the problem from their class to spare the rest of their class and that they have absolutely no support from the parents. Knowing that they have our full support and that we have theirs has been very reassuring. I know they're both treated like gold at school and their teachers have nothing but positive things to say about them both which considering the difficulties we've gone through, I'd say I'm very thankful and incredibly grateful. > Their reactions to negative behavior aren't enough to prevent him from doing it. With regards to your point about societal norms - if the negative behaviour hasn't been enough to prevent him doing it, it doesn't matter to him enough right now to make him change his belief. Eventually he will either become self conscious enough to change this, or he'll find a sense of style he enjoys that will change this, or he won't care and if he doesn't care - does this really matter? Only he can really answer that.

GrinningFool 10y ago

>> having ADHD and ODD I strongly suspect that we're looking at the same combination in our son. Sadly I'm reluctant to take my concerns to a medical professional because ODD has a strong correlation with abuse. While I've no doubt that some of my and my wife's parenting has contributed to this, abuse isn't happening -- it's literally been his personality since he could first talk. Still, it's enough to make me uncomfortable going into a situation where that's the assumption[1] Was yours a medical diagnosis - and if so, did you run into any troubles around that aspect? > If you're worried about how they dress reflects on you, This raises an interesting problem though. I find I'm reinforcing societal norms that aren't consistent with my own - because I'm aware that he has to function among peers and adults every day in a social environment. Their reactions to negative behavior aren't enough to prevent him from doing it. Encouragingly, the couple of situations I've explained that for [in simplified form] have resulted in major improvement (such as using 'inappropriate' language - I personally think it's fine if you know the meanings and usage of the words and when it's ok to use them, regardless of age. After explaining that other adults and parents didn't view it that way, and that it means they won't want him playing with their children and will think poorly of us as a family, that particular problem stopped.) > Sometimes the easiest path is just relinquishing control of everything inconsequential and only controlling the things that really matter: Don't let them hurt or kill themselves or anyone else and don't let them damage or destroy anything that doesn't belong to them. This, as a lesson slowly being learned.

balabaster 10y ago
With regards to the medical diagnosis - this is the back story, sorry it's a little long winded: So our eldest was born with 2 holes in her heart. She is the one suffering ODD. She was a difficult baby from the very outset, she wouldn't feed and was in hospital for the first 3 months of her life with her mother living in with her and me providing relief outside of work so she could get some much needed rest so it was a round the clock affair for 3 months until she was released just in time for Christmas. Of course this took a toll on everyone involved. She went round after round of tests, had a feeding tube and had to be fed through this every 2 hours, after which she would guarantee to throw up and need changing and cry the entire time and need to be carried around the halls of the hospital to attempt to stem the constant crying. While my daughter won't be able to remember any of this, it would be remiss to assume there was no psychological trauma left. Fast forward 4 years and she had to go in for open heart surgery. She was old enough to understand what was happening and while we were as gentle as we could be, we couldn't shield her from the truth and we kept up a positive strength with her to help bolster a confidence in her that we lacked ourselves. To say this was traumatic is an understatement and I think all of us share in that trauma - some of which remains to this day. The killer was when she asked how we could have abandoned her at the hospital to be cut open like that... if you ever want to feel like you were cut in two and had your beating heart ripped out of your chest - that was that moment. We were by her side throughout, but there is trauma that she most definitely needs help with. In fact, in many ways, I think there is trauma all round that we'd benefit from help with. We resisted for ages going for medical diagnosis because we didn't want to be "those parents" - you know, the ones that medicate their kids because they just can't cope with kids being kids. We asked ourselves many times if this behaviour was just normal kids and that our perspective was just skewed. In the end we went in to the hospital after our eldest had a throw down tantrum where she was looking like she was going to cause serious physical damage that lasted for too long to ignore and we sat down with the psychiatrist and said to them - we're not looking for medication, we're not looking for her to get a psychiatrist, we want real honest to God unbiased, objective advice on her behaviour and if this is normal and our perspective is whacked or if she needs medical assistance. We all did questionnaires, her school teachers did questionnaires - we were very forthright with the teachers and told them what was going on and what we were experiencing at home and asked them for their input and gave them our support. One thing I learned from this is that most teachers won't raise their concerns with parents because more often than not, parents will come back with the attitude "that's your job, they're our problem at home, when they're at school they're your problem" or if the teacher raises the prospect of the fact that your child may have something that needs to be dealt with professionally, parents get defensive. Our going to the teachers I think was liberating for everyone involved - the teachers thanked us for our support and have been incredibly incredibly supportive with us in return. Anyway, after a week under observation at the in-patient psychological wing of the hospital and having in-class support at school, it was determined that our first does indeed have at least ADHD and suspected ODD. Is there stigma? Yes. Does it affect how she's treated at school, to an extent yes, but on the whole the staff have been amazing and collaborative with us. Building a relationship with them helps a huge amount. Frequently the problem kids that you hear about being ostracized and mistreated are because the teachers have little choice but to remove the problem from their class to spare the rest of their class and that they have absolutely no support from the parents. Knowing that they have our full support and that we have theirs has been very reassuring. I know they're both treated like gold at school and their teachers have nothing but positive things to say about them both which considering the difficulties we've gone through, I'd say I'm very thankful and incredibly grateful. > Their reactions to negative behavior aren't enough to prevent him from doing it. With regards to your point about societal norms - if the negative behaviour hasn't been enough to prevent him doing it, it doesn't matter to him enough right now to make him change his belief. Eventually he will either become self conscious enough to change this, or he'll find a sense of style he enjoys that will change this, or he won't care and if he doesn't care - does this really matter? Only he can really answer that.