Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a behavioral disorder.  That means that a child’s disruptive, defiant behavior is frequent and repeated.  The frequency of the bad behavior it what makes it a “disorder.” An ODD level of behavior is determined mostly through a parent’s ratings. At a minimum, the child is rated: often angry, often blames others, often lies, often annoys others, is often and easily annoyed themselves, often disruptive, often tantrums, often disobeys. Parents know when their child’s behavior is at a disorder level because the household becomes chaotic, and parents are rendered angry and often depressed because nothing seems to work.

If nothing is done, if no treatment is undertaken, a good percentage of these children develop what is called Conduct Disorder which later becomes full blown criminal behavior. By then, the child’s life prospects are over and the family is all but destroyed.  Treatment is essential.  And for treatment to work, parents need to understand what is causing ODD. In medical science, you need to know the cause of a disease in order to cure it.

If you visit the Mayo Clinic website; the American Psychiatric Association website or read any scholarly information about Oppositional Defiant Disorder that speaks to “cause”, it will be stated that the exact cause is unknown.  It is true that from a scientific standpoint the “cause” of ODD has not been proven.  Present day science can only report what is correlated or associated with this childhood behavioral disorder. There are no scientific endeavors that have control groups and experimental groups that have searched for the “cause” of ODD.

I am Dr. Joanne Wilkoff Wilson. I am a child psychologist who worked for over thirty years specializing in and treating ODD. I developed a parent management training group treatment program for ODD called FAST (Family Attachment Skills Training). FAST was used to treat over 2,000 ODD children over the course of 11 years. FAST treatment consistently eliminated ODD in 80 percent of the children treated. I authored a book that brings that treatment to the greater public, titled

BREAKING UP WITH ODD: A 7 WEEK GUIDE TO PARENT-CHILD ATTACHMENT AND COOPERATION THROUGH LOVE AND CONSEQUENCES.   

 I feel justified in explaining what “causes” Oppositional Defiant Disorder. because my treatment program, FAST, was formulated to remove what I observed to be the cause of ODD and ODD was eliminated. I communicated that cause to the parents of those ODD children attending the FAST program with their ODD children and then taught the parents how to remove that cause. Once the parents removed the cause and healed the attachment with their children almost 1400 children achieved normality. In other words, enabling parents to eliminate the cause of ODD, enabled them to eliminate ODD in their children, in only seven weeks’ time.  This is why I am certain that my explanation of what causes Oppositional Defiant Disorder is correct.

 First, I need to describe what sets up the conditions for the cause, in the first place. There are four conditions that need to be accepted and understood in order to believe what the cause is for Oppositional Defiant Disorder.  Some of the conditions are scientific facts, some are just plain common sense.

First Condition: Children are not born with ODD.  ODD children are however, born with a difficult temperament.  What do I mean by that?  Every ODD child frustrates easily.  Your ODD child gets frustrated easily. The ODD child is born with brain chemistry that makes them frustrate easily.  Their brain chemistry makes them overly emotional, irritable, angry, touchy, unable to settle down.  They are born with a brain chemistry that makes them to be what I call “uncomfortable.”  ODD children are uncomfortable children.

Sixty percent of the time, that uncomfortable brain chemistry is due to ADHD.  Six out of ten ODD children function in the world with ADHD.  ADHD kids are not comfortable.  Sometimes they feel like a wound-up ball of rubber bands waiting to snap.  The remainder of ODD kids are uncomfortable because some might be on the spectrum of autism. Autistic kids are not comfortable.  Some of these kids are born with mood disorders (depression or anxiety).  Kids who are moody and anxious are not comfortable.  Then ODD arrives.  It arrives after the child enters the world already being uncomfortable.

So, this first condition is a scientific fact.  ODD is considered a comorbid disorder, meaning that it partners with something else that is making the child uncomfortable.  If your child has been diagnosed with ODD but you have not been made aware of what else is affecting their temperament, look into it.  There is no medication for ODD, but there is medication for the partner disorder that creates discomfort. That medication could possibly help out. 

Second Condition: Uncomfortable children can make everyone around them uncomfortable creating negative behavioral energy. You’ve heard the saying, “Misery loves company.” The uncomfortable child sends out negative energy and that negative energy goes back and forth between parent and child.  The child is defiant. The parent yells. The child tantrums. The parent gets upset. The child breaks something or hurts a sibling and the parent screams at the child. This is all understandable and it is common sense.

Behavioral energy plays a large role in this second condition and the cause of ODD.  What is behavioral energy?  It is a person’s movement, their facial expression, their voice volume, the overall emotional reaction. For example, think about the amount of behavioral energy you would send out if you met your neighbor in the grocery store. You would say hello.  You’d chat for a minute or so. Now picture yourself in the airport waiting for the arrival of someone you love. The hugging, the loud voices, the laughter and talking.  Which situation contains more behavioral energy, meeting a neighbor or greeting a loved one.  Obviously, meeting a loved one involves much more emotional energy. 

Think about the amount of behavioral energy there is when you notice some small good deed your child has done.  A parent, usually says something like “Good Job!”.  Now compare that to your reaction when your ODD child breaks something or annoys the dog or strikes a sibling or refuses to comply.  “Stop that!  What are you doing? I’ve told you a million times not to do that!” This common reaction makes your face get contorted in anger. Your voice gets really loud. You move around and do a lot of talking. Yep, negative behavioral energy is louder, has more movement, has more emotion and lasts longer. <INSERT 5 SEC. VIDEO OF PARENT SCREAMING >The child ends up receiving more of a parent’s behavioral energy when he or she does something wrong than when they do some small thing that is right.

Third Condition: Scientific fact: Behavior that is repeated is behavior that has been rewarded. I’ll say that again.  It’s a scientific fact that behavior that is repeated is behavior that has been rewarded. Most of you wouldn’t show up at a job if you didn’t get a paycheck. Think about slot machines. Once there is a win, gambling can go on for hours. Think about drug addiction and repeating the behavior to get high even though, in the long run it’s killing the person, because the high is the reward.

Fourth Condition: The ODD child gets rewarded for their ODD behavior with parental negative energy.  It is a bigger pay-off.  The child gets more out of the parent. The child gets to see and hear their parent have a larger, louder, longer behavioral reaction. The child figures, if I do this, I’ll get him or her to react this way.  This is my relationship with my parent.  This is how I get my parent to notice me and give me attention.  This is what I want so I am going to annoy my sister, refuse to comply, tantrum, disrupt the peace again and again and again.

     So, here is the cause of ODD. Parents accidentally (I’ll repeat that) accidentally reward ODD behavior with parental negative energy.  Most other children don’t like to get yelled at; don’t like to have toys taken away; don’t like to get grounded. None of that works with the ODD child and parents don’t realize that they are actually rewarding defiant and disruptive behavior.  It is not the parent’s fault.  No one has ever explained this to the parent until now. The end result is a miserable relationship between the ODD child and the parent and a miserable family. 

   Removing the cause of ODD is not easy, it takes weeks of practice learning special techniques to not give negativity because it is a habit that every parent gets into. The child also needs to learn alternatives for getting their parents’ attention. If just the cause, the negativity reward is removed and not replaced with something else, the child reasons, “Wait!! Why isn’t this working?  It always worked before? I need to try harder.”  Then the ODD behavior just gets worse.

Parent negative energy needs to be replaced with something else.  Negative energy needs to be replaced with something that has reward value, something that makes it worth it for the child to transform into normal levels of behavior. Can you guess what it is?