Our Journey Into the World of ODD

Here is my sweet, kind-hearted, generous, and loving second daughter, Alicia, who is nine-years-old. She is always the first one with a hug, a compliment, or a sweet note.

Starting last January though, our frustrations with her were beginning to mount. There were ever-increasing moments of strained parenting and I would lie awake at night wondering what I was doing wrong.

My emotional energy was being sapped as I tried to pin-point what could possibly be causing the countless tantrums, emotional melt-downs, and endless arguments, and wondering why what had worked with our oldest daughter wasn't working with Alicia.

Even more pressing was the concern we had about Alicia's school work. She was falling further and further behind in school and we were getting worried. They put her in some special reading and math groups at school, which helped, but she was still falling way behind with her testing. We tried scouting around for specialized reading and tutor programs to try and help her, but nothing felt right.

We were out of options. The only problem was, we didn't know what the problem was in the first place, so we didn't know how to go about fixing such an elusive problem. At this point, I went back to Alicia's teacher and told her we had been unsuccessful in finding a program that would work for her, at which point she suggested Alicia have the school do one of their all-around testing things.

We readily agreed and before we knew it, I was filling out packets of paperwork, and she was being tested by the school psychologist, the resource teacher, the reading specialist, and her own teacher. Finally, after a long month wait, the school was done and we received the results. It was such a relief to finally have some answers and some further guidance and direction.

We found out she didn't have any learning disorders and she had an average IQ, which meant she shouldn't be having so much trouble in school. The only thing that cropped up was the possibility for ADHD and/or ODD, at which point we were directed to her pediatrician and a child-psychologist, who did some testing and discovered she did not have ADHD, but did have Oppositional Defiance Disorder, or ODD for short.

I had no idea what it was, or what it meant, so I checked out a bunch of books at the library. For so long I had thought Alicia would simply 'grow-out' of her mood issues and temper tantrums. I learned something valuable from the books I read - children with ODD don't simply 'grow-out' of it - you have to learn how to work with it, things that I was doing completely wrong.

Basically, ODD is a mood-disorder where people have a hard time controlling their moods and especially have difficulty managing their temper when they are frustrated or angry. Every page I read in the first book I read about ODD fit Alicia perfectly, and for the first time in many, many months, Alicia's behaviors made sense to me and even more importantly - I had answers on how to change the way we were parenting so we could decrease the number of tantrums and emotional outbursts.

I continued reading more books, and we started seeing a child-psychologist who works up at McKay Dee Hospital. He has been incredibly helpful in opening our eyes to this disorder and how best to go about helping Alicia learn to deal with her emotions.

After a particularly rough day of emotional outbursts and extensive arguing from her, she made this for me:

I was touched that she had noticed we were doing our best to try and help her. Each time I look at this, I remember what this is all about - continuing to love and take care of that kind, sweet, loving child I am proud to call My Daughter.