Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘ODD’

Over many years of work, I have seen many kids whose parents claimed they had ADD (Attention Deficit disorder) and/or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) and wanted to know what I thought about giving them Ritalin.

Luckily, I am not a doctor and I do not need to prescribe medication to kids, but when parents want my opinion, I usually say, “Try as many other things as you can before you consider Ritalin”.

In fact, this happened to me again recently.

Luke is a 6-year-old boy who came to see me because he was diagnosed with (are you sitting down?) ADD, ADHD, autism, Asperger Syndrome, ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The doctor was pushing the parents hard to put him on Ritalin, but his mom did not like the idea. She changed his diet and said there was a significant improvement at first, but felt that after 6 months of a strict diet, the effects had worn off and he was becoming more agitated and getting into trouble at school again.

Children’s behavior is the concern of many parents. Kids can be diagnosed with ADD, ADHD or ODD, when in fact, it is the various choices their parents have made throughout the course of their kids’ lives that make kids act the way they do. Yes, I know this is hard to accept, but I believe that if you were to give me a normal child – boy or girl – I could, by making a simple choice to act in a particular way, single-handedly turn this child into a problematic beast with social problems, difficulties with authority, declining academic achievement, lack of motivation, depression, anger and anxiety, just to name a few.

Opposition Defiance Disorder (ODD) is another name people who like labels use when they need a budget for helping children. Someone has worked very hard and probably spent many dollars to research kids and teens (they say ODD can start as early as 1-3 years of age) and come up with a nice label. Since ADHD worked so well, ODD should work quite well too. Labels are a good way to attract funds, but I am not sure they are good to make things better.