Diagnosis

So, the doc was talking about a new diagnosis for Curly Girl(besides Attention Deficit Disorder)-- Oppostional Defiant Disorder. Without knowing anything about it, the name of it sounds scary. But when you know something about it (which I do after working at schools for emotionally/behaviorally disturbed kids), then it's really scary. For one thing, children with ODD (the initials suck-- didn't anyone think that through?) who still exhibit these behaviors as teens get the diagnosis of Conduct Disorder, and are generally the kind of kids who are voted "Most Likely to do Serious Jail Time." [Understand that these are wild generalizations made by a worried momma.]

My first reaction was denial-- "That's way too serious a diagnosis for me to deal with, so it can't be true." After reading more about it, I am becoming convinced-- although not completely. It still doesn't "feel" right; she doesn't "feel" like the kids I've known with ODD. Then again, they were all older, so maybe they had just learned more behaviors in that time. And they were in residential settings, so they were more severe than she is. A lot of the characteristics sound like her-- almost reflexively argue with "commands," for example.

If it is a correct diagnosis, then it's a good thing because it can lead to the right treatment. The one thing that bothers me the most about the diagnosis is the tendency I have seen in some of the literature to say that ODD is caused by bad parenting. OK, nothing was quite that explicit, but one website did say, "Prevention of ODD begins with good parenting." So, why did my first two children show no signs of ODD? The two who were parented with the same skills I used with the third? I didn't change, the methods didn't change-- the child was different. It is already easy to feel judged to be a bad parent when I'm walking through a parking lot with my 6-year old screaming, "Let go of me! You're hurting me!" because she would rather run ahead of me instead of holding my hand. It reminds me of schizophrenia and autism being blamed on "refrigerator mothers" in the past-- "We're not sure what causes this disorder, so it must be the parents' fault."