|
Oppositional
Defiance Disorder (ODD) may be caused by many factors including heredity,
abuse, mood disorders, or inconsistent or neglectful parenting.
Additionally, an often-overlooked source of ODD is overindulgence.
-
Is your child is a spoiled brat?
-
Do classmates and neighborhood kids
avoid your child?
-
Does your child tell you what to do?
-
Do you go into the schools and fight
your children’s battles for them?
-
Do you want your child to succeed
more than he does?
-
Do you feel like your child mostly
determines what happens in your life?
If you answered yes to the above
questions, chances are good that your child has or will develop
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (O.D.D.). O.D.D. children are usually not
born that way, they are created by parents who have not nurtured adequate
parenting skills.
In order to be equipped for life in our society your child needs to learn
how to deal with and effectively cope with failure. In addition, he needs
to learn to play fairly, and to take responsibility for the consequences
of his misbehavior and bad attitude. If your child does not learn these
lessons in childhood when their personality is being formed, life has its
own way of teaching him about failure - unsually in a much harsher manner.
How will this happen? Any or all these are distinct possibilities:
-
through frequent problems with
authority (the teacher, the boss, the police),
-
after a series of bad relationships
finally forces him into treatment or a drug or alcohol recovery program,
-
after physically getting beaten up or
hurt by someone,
-
after getting prescribed
antidepressants because life “just never seems to go my way,”
-
after a series of jobs that didn’t
work out.
Why do parents overindulge a
child? Typically, it is a substitute for genuine love and affection or
the willingness to take time for their child. There is the mistaken belief
that giving them many things will make the child love the parent.
Sometimes parents are projecting and focusing their own disappointment
about life onto their child’s little shoulders, avoidance - it is much
easier and somehow nobler to tackle the child’s problems than a parent’s
problem. Love can be misguided when a parent wants to inappropriately
shelter their child from failure. Perhaps the parent never learned to
adequately deal with failure and believe that, if you just assert
yourself, your child will somehow avoid the disappointments you
experienced.
How can this be avoided? Take time to be with and understand your
child. Stop enabling a child to feel successful when, in actuality, he is
underperforming, underachieving, or failing. Overindulgence creates a
sense of entitlement that adult life rarely supports unless you happen to
be royalty or wealthy or unusually handsome or pretty. But even in these
unique situations, people are rarely intrinsically happy or feel
fulfilled.
Constant “giving in” to a child, allowing him, making excuses for him,
giving him what he wants when he wants it teaches your child this: “Mom
(or Dad) will always be there to take care of me and solve all my
problems, I don’t really have to try because I can’t fail.” The reality is
you have taught your child something that society will spend the rest of
your child’s life correcting. When this happens you have totally failed
your primary responsibility as a parent. Most child development experts
agree that a parent’s primary job is to prepare their child to competently
handle adult life. Overindulgence sets up a child for an adult life
riddled with disappointment, lack of motivation, and much unhappyness.
Life for the overindulged is a series of battles and disappointments.
Supervisors, fellow employees and spouses will not treat them in the
special manner they experienced and came to expect during his childhood.
They often vacillate between anger and depression turning to alcohol or
drugs to feel better in the moment.
Due to abusive overindulgence an adult child will feel entitled to a life
that is as easy as it was as a child. This is very unrealistic because the
parent will not be there to run interference and adult child is totally
without the tools needed to cope. He has not learned how to deal with the
expectations, responsibility, or failure which is very much a part of
normal life. There is no reserve capacity or resilience to handle the
inevitable disappointments inherent in contemporary adult life.
Often, I have sat with parents who are EXTREMELY wealthy discussing their
oppositional child who does not care about their grades or how their
defiant behavior is alienating them from their peers. I ask the parent,
“Did your parents give to you the many things you’ve given to your child?”
or “Did your parent go to your school and insist your grade be changed
from a C+ to a B? Inevitably, the parents says something to the effect,
“No, we grew up not knowing where our next meal was coming from.” or “Are
you kidding, my parents never even looked at my report card.” Adversity
creates the environment for success and failure is an opportunity to grow.
THE SOLUTION
As difficult as it is, let your child feel the natural consequences of
failure or their bad attitude. At the deepest level possible a child needs
to comprehend and fully understand that actions or inaction have profound
and lasting consequences. It is much easier to fail 6th grade twice, and
thereby learn these lessons at age 11, than after several failed
marriages, repeated job losses, and the unhappiness that is inherent in a
life of disappointment and chronic underachievement.
Get the assistance you need to help form the character of the young person
that has been entrusted to you. Remember, children come though us and we
need to do what is in their ultimate best interest. Please don’t fall into
the supremely enticing trap of trading in your child’s future in order to
shelter him from disappointment now. Our Center is here to help with
suggestions on books, therapists, and parenting classes.
Gary J. Schummer, Ph.D.
|