If you're new here you might want to check out our top recommendation for parents. You can get a copy of The Total Transformation Program for free for a limited time, and it truly is a fantastic resource.

Children with ODD can obviously be more difficult to raise than other children, but the reasons behind this are frequently misunderstood. While it’s tempting to think that there’s nothing you can do about the behavior, the truth is that this problem is not without solutions – and with a little effort, you can help your children overcome this difficulty and improve their lives.

While children with ODD are clearly under a disadvantage, the disorder is not the same as a disease; there is an underlying error in the way these children think about their social interactions, and once both you and they understand the error in this thinking, it can be corrected.

It’s important to remember that these errors are not caused by bad parenting, but by the natural process of children trying to understand the world around them. Their questions may not be easy to ask, and the answers they produce on their own are likely to be incorrect.

Of the skills children need to learn, one of the most important is the process of understanding a social situation. When a child sees a group of people, it’s not always obvious how those people are feeling or even what they are doing – and it’s certainly not obvious how they will feel after you walk in and do what you’re thinking of doing.

Most children are fundamentally self-involved. Without any way of knowing what you are thinking or feeling, they naturally assume that you are thinking and feeling the same thing they do; when you’re fixing dinner, and the child doesn’t think fixing dinner is fun, it should be a welcome distraction if someone comes in and plays a game with you.

Of course, this isn’t what happens, and the child can’t understand why. Without the tools to understand facial expression and body language as indicators of someone’s emotional state, the response is confusing – and the child is frequently angry or hurt.

There is a reason children spend an inordinate amount of time asking “why” at a certain point in their lives. They aren’t equipped to figure out why on their own – and they need help to understand. Spending a little time to help them understand social interactions, and how people relate to one another, can go a long way in helping children with ODD learn how to deal with the situations they encounter every day.

To learn more about raising a child with ODD, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

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