don't worry.
We all have moments when we are venting and sound a bit negative.
You probably went through tough and rough attempts to help your kid.
I sure do not envy you for going through such thing.
No one can be the judge of it.
I hope you will find something that will help you get to him.
I hope he will allow you to come closer.
I am not sure the ODD title is helping.
No one needs freedom unless he feels he doesn't have one. Something Made him perceive life as threatening.
It does not matter what he tells his friends, he knows the truth and you know it.
I hope the DA threat did a good job and he is re-thinking.
When he is 18 no one will be impressed and he won't be able to hide behind "it was my dad's or mom's fault".
If he loves any form of art, you can try interests him with that.
If there is something he needs from you, give it only as a reward for good behaviour.
for example: who is paying for the Internet? for his mobile phone? take messages for him? make him dinner?...
It may be hard but if it is just a trial and error until you hit the soft spot. They all have a soft spot - we just need to find it.

I wish you luck and congratulate you for trying so hard for him.
one day, he will thank you for it. Just keep telling him you love him, even when he is upset, well, especially when he is upset and he will remember it.

Good luck!
Ronit

My son has been kicked out of several schools and finally barely passed the GED as a requirement to get off probation. I once asked if he wanted me to home school him and he said no because he loves school. School has not been an issue with him for 6 months now. Neither has work since he feels that it is entirely my job to find him a job. I and the wife have found 3 so far and he has been fired from one for sexual harassment. And the managers of the other too don't care to talk to me about him.

I understand when a child is frustrated and acts out. All of my children have at times, as I did as a kid my self.
Sometimes giving into what the child wants is not being a responsible parent. My defiant son simply wants to be left alone. At 16 he told his probation officer exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be given an apartment, TV, Xbox, food delivered, a car and $500 a week. If the state would not "emancipate" him in that way then his parents should do that for him because parents will do any thing to make their kids happy. He even asked the Judge to emancipate him. He got exactly the response you would expect. "Emancipate you? Your lucky I don't throw you in jail. You should be happy your parents are still willing to work this out because I would put you in jail today!"

In deed I would be very happy if the world would treat me like a prince and give me every thing I ever wanted with out any work on my part too. But that is not reality.
Actions have consequences. Calling some one a bunch of names means they will not help you solve your problems. That is reality. Most of us learn this by a very early age. He seems to have missed this some how. Asking for help and working out the issues in a calm manner will lead to help and often a compromise.

So yes I am putting my foot down. In 3 weeks he is 18 and he has been told that I will not tolerate his bullying of his mother or other members of the family. I will throw him out of the home if it happens when he is 18.

Because of his record ..with the state and three local cities we have been to several anger management and family communication courses together. He does well in the course just as the does well in interviews with mental health professionals. But all of the adults in his life that place any expectations on him to do any thing for any kind of reward eventually find that he will not do the expected work but expect the reward regardless. And if the reward does not happen then the teacher, coach or minister is a F**ng what ever.
The last school he was at he even tried to claim that the Gym teacher had hit him to get the teacher fired. Why .. because the Gym teacher found him screaming violent cuss words and names at a girl at school and told him that it was wrong and he needs to stop. There were other kids around and reported that my son cussed the gym teacher out. He later tried to say that he was doing nothing wrong and the gym teacher has it in for him. Every time he gets in trouble his first response is always the same. "I didn't do any thing wrong", usually to the total amazement of all who witnessed his actions. It is a real jaw dropper. The Gym teacher was the last is a long line of teachers and my wife accused of being out to get him simply because they hold a standard for proper behavior that he is unwilling to meet so it is therefore their fault and not his own.

In my son's case the cussing and yelling is not used to express frustration. It is used intentionally to intimidate, manipulate and bully others into doing what he wants them to do. He has used it since the 5th grade.

Yes he uses bulling to get what he wants because he either does not know what to do or wants others to do it for him. Fact is most of the time after hours of abusing others he will do the solution given to him by his parents or his brothers. But it is all about getting others to do every thing for him. In other words wait on him and his every little need. It is as if he is still and infant.

I took the approach for a while (nearly destroyed my marriage and my relationship with my other two sons.) of taking the abuse and walking him through every thing that he wanted and that frustrated him. I did this for a while. The result was exactly what you would think. He treated me a bit better for a while ...treated the rest of the family even worse then ever and then stepped up his abuse toward me to try and make me do even more for him. His view became one of the louder and meaner you get the more likely you are to get what you want. I was facilitating that. So I quit. I want back to what is rite for the family regardless of what he thinks is rite for him.

As for success of other parents. I'd love to find a support group of that sort in my area. Because at the moment, one of my sons friends mother has simply paid for an apartment for her two sons for a year and is selling her home and moving to another city. The other mom is getting divorced because she and the dad don't agree on what to do with their son. So he is leaving and her solution is to pay all his fines, buy him a car and take him out driving. Then on weekends he gets drunk with his aunt.

I have a neighbor whose son was starting down the same path and was yelling and cussing at his mother and sisters to get what he wanted. My neighbor was very successful in stopping that behavior is a very short period of time and has a great relationship with his son who even helped support the family home when my neighbor was out of work for a few months. This same boy spends every other weekend in our home as he is a good friend of my oldest son. We refer to his boy as our 4th son. However the method used to fix the behavior had his son reported it, would have landed my neighbor in jail for at least a year.

My son had a girlfriend whose mother called the police every time she left the house with out permission. She removed the door to her daughters room. She removed all of the girls cloths and electronics .. she even got to the point once where she locked the room and gave the girl a blanket to sleep on the couch. She made the home a jail for all who lived there to make her daughter do what was required of her. This was the advice she had been given by several counselors. In the end her daughter still goes out at night and the mother had to give up the fight because she was destroying the lives of her other 3 girls.

These kids want exactly what you expect they want. Absolute and total freedom with no obligations to any one and no responsibility or accountability. They want every minute of every day to be a wild fun party.

They, regardless of frustration and acting out, have to learn that freedom comes with responsibility. That reward comes after hard work and that success is not given; it is earned. Being a bully to get what you want only works in some cases but will never get you very far. That cooperation gets you a lot farther then intimidation or tantrums.

And yes he threatened my wife by backing her to a wall and threatened to hit her with a picture frame. I stepped in and prevented it. Got in a fight when he hit me. Threw him out of the house. Told him he could return when he promised not to threaten others in the house. Had the police show up and make me take him in while they gave me an assault ticket along with him. Note he thought that they would do nothing to him since he is the victim having been thrown out. We went to court and the DA let me off with arbitration. But told him if she sees him in court again she will ask the judge for at least 30 days and a $5000 fine. To this day he tells his friends that he asked the DA to let his dad off and that he would accept arbitration because it was his dad. Rather big of him don't you think?

You are right. It never happened to me that my child did that but it happened to me that children I worked with did that and it is not fun at all.
I have more memories of doing this myself to my own parents...
However,
In the book "The way of the Wizard" by Deepak Chopra, Merlin teaches Arthur the way of wizard. The first rule is to see feelings instead of actions/word.
So I will try to be wise and apply rule # 1 and this is what I see:

Adult unhappy with boss - I am frustrated.

Teen stretching his wings - I am very frustrated.

ODD Teen - I am extremely frustrated....I am scared...I don't know what to do... I need help...Please!...How many F**ing times do I need to tell you I am frustrated?

Frustration is part of life. There is no point in taking blame for kids' behaviour. Taking blame and taking responsibility is not the same thing. Blame is trying to find someone to take away your burden and asking "Why did it happen to me?". Taking responsibility is trying to find a solution and asking "What can I do to change it?"

Labels, like the ODD one is a blame focus. Oh, let's blame the chemical imbalance. Let me tell you, every time something is happening and we are frustrated, there is a chemical imbalance but it is part of life and we need to have better skills to cope. Better skills not better labels. ODD teen does not have enough life experience to express his fears and recognise the consequences of his actions/word.yet!
labels work against you. When you label you kid as ODD, you give him the permission to be ODD.

I am sure that what you are facing is frustrating too and no one is blaming you. The question is not if he has ODD or not, the question is "What can we do to change it?". I always ask the parents I work with "OK, now that you have the label, did it fix the problem?". Your child has a need that is not fulfilled and he is begging you to help him. Using drugs is another way of seeking help. In how many ways do you want to hear it?

I do not know if taking your child out of school, like Bob and his wife did, is the right thing for you but I sure recommend asking him about his experience.

If you think people need to experience it to help you, find other parents who managed to find a solution. I promise you none of them is impressed by labels.

When you win, I am sure the memory of the anger, frustration and the excessive use of the F word will fade.

Be strong!
Ronit

I didn't know that about you.
It adds some "flavour" to what you do.
You and your wife are brave people and inspiration to many other parents. I hope many people will click on your website and go and find out who you are.

I am fighting the labels from special educator's perspective. You are doing it from personal experience. That is sure inspiring to win your kid back by not giving up on him.
From time to time, people tel me " but you don't know what I am talking about because your own kids are..."
What they don't know is that I was an ODD and ADHD with physical disabilities and learning difficulties kid myself. So they are right, I don't know what it means to be a parent to such kid.
I think next time I will forward them to you.
What do you say?

Happy day to you ODD dad
Ronit

Has your son thrown a house brick at your head yet? My son did that to me once after he'd become deeply unhappy at school (it didn't hit me - I ducked in time). Week after week, every time I collected my son at the end of the school day, I would be treated to a barrage of F words and have my arms punched and my shins kicked to pieces on the walk home. That's because he blamed me for his unhappiness - I was the one who made sure he got to school every day. Then there was the time he whacked me with a six foot long tree branch. Ouch. That really did hurt. I was lucky nothing was broken. In the meantime, I did my best to help my son adapt to school life, but to no avail. Eventually, my wife and I took him out of school to be educated at home and his unhappiness and violent behaviour disappeared like morning mist in the sunshine. Odd that, isn't it?

Well, not to me it isn't. It makes perfect sense. We're all much happier when we get what we really want, are we not?

Just saying that ODD is not exactly a bad day type issue. Perhaps you have never seen it in person.
I live with one.

And in case you want to minimize or dismiss it .. well he is in a good christian home with two parents one is a teacher and the other a systems engineer. he has too older brothers that are doing fine. He was in sports nearly his entire life and has had loads of encouragement. Dad does many activities with the 3 boys that they all enjoy, camping, fishing, hiking, paint ball, video games and many other activities. Neither Dad or Mom does drugs, drinks or is depressed. Neither is away from home for long periods. Family chores and rules are clearly articulated and posed on a regular basis. This one clearly knows that and simply states that he can not be made to do them because there is nothing you as a parent can do to enforce them. And he is right. And of course all of this got way worse when he started using drugs. As one police officer put it .."It is like living with a wild animal"

Ronit
http://www.behappyinlife.com/be_special_be_yourself_for_teenagers.php