Everything you know about parenting your “impossible” child is wrong. It must be wrong because if it were right and the parenting was working, you wouldn’t be reading this. Oppositional Defiant disorder is not your fault. remember the old joke “I had a child, but he didn’t come with instructions”? Well, even if you had instructions, they wouldn’t apply to this child. ODD children get parented differently, and you didn’t know that. If you have other children, who are not ODD, you know I am right, as you’ll have to admit that works for your other kids does not work for this one. Commands, reprimands, time-outs and consequences like taking toys away may work with your other children, just not for your child with the ODD diagnosis.

On the last night of the seven-week FAST (Family Attachment Skills Training) program, ten to twenty parents and grandparents sat quietly, circling numbers on a rating form designed to diagnose Oppositional Defiant Disorder and determine its level of disruptiveness. A mildly tense silence blanketed the room as ten ODD children and their siblings sat and waited.

The treatment for ODD is not taking your child to a therapist while you sit in the waiting room. A child cannot be talked out of defiance and disruption. The ODD child does not drop ODD by working through his or her anger in play therapy. For decades, the best practice, evidence-based treatment for ODD is called Parent Management Training (PMT). Dealing with these difficult children actually requires the parent to be trained because these children get parented differently. Any parent, who has both an ODD child in the family and a child who is compliant, knows that what works for a child who complies with requests and has a more even temperament, does NOT work for the ODD child.