new here, I think my daughter has ODD help

[ddelamerced]

She has been defiant since she was young. She's getting worse. The doctors kept telling me it's from anxiety, I'm not so sure anymore. She's going to be 13 and she's getting hard to even be around. Everything I tell her to do, ask her kindly to do, she tells me no. This goes for bedtime, homeschooling, everything. I don't know how to handle it. We have given her punishments, taken things away, and she doesn't care it's like we are walking around on eggshells just so we won't **** Emilee off. Ready to pull my hair out. She gets mad really easy. One minute she's laughing, and you tell her something, and all of a sudden she's in her room throwing things around. She also attacks her sister all the time. She hits her. Sometimes Mae bugs her, but sometimes she doesn't. She can just be not doing anything, and Emilee will go and hit her.

 

[Bunny]

Hello, and welcome to our little corner of the World Wide Web.

You said "the doctor" say this is stemming from anxiety. What kind of doctor? Does she have a diagnosis? Who did the evaluations? I was told the very same thing. Tantrums and meltdowns caused by anxiety, and our working theory was that if we could get the anxiety under control the meltdowns would stop. Guess what? That didn't happen.

Are you sure that anxiety is the only problem? Could the doctors be missing something?

 

[BusynMember]

Has she ever seen a neuropsychologist for an evaluation?

Can you give us more background information, including her early life situation and her development? Who lives with her? Is she violent? How was she as an infant and toddler? Milestones? Does she know how to relate well to her same age peers? Do you like her friends?

Many of us don't think ODD is useful...sort of a "we don't know what it is so we'll say it's ODD" type of thing. I'm one of them. Also, 13 is a bit old to say it's from ODD. ODD rarely stands by itself.

Has she ever had an intensive evaluation by anybody? Testing, other than school testing?

Welcome to our world, but so sorry you have to be here.

 

[InsaneCdn]

ODD is... an odd diagnosis. It does accurately describe behavior of many of "our" kids. But... the diagnosis gets you nothing beyond a diagnosis. No interventions, therapies, accommodations, medications. NOTHING. For us, it was a useful placeholder - at least it certified that we were not "crazy parents"... our kid did indeed have a problem.

Anxiety is probably a more accurate diagnosis... but only partly. As in, the anxiety is real, and probably is a major factor in the behaviors. But WHY the anxiety? There can be all sorts of reasons.

Comprehensive evaluations cover most of the possibilities, but not always. Sometimes Occupational Therapist (OT) (sensory and/or motor skills issues) and Speech Language Pathologist (SLP)/Auditory evaluations (APDs including auditory figure ground and auditory discrimination) need to be done in addition.

 

[elbogrease]

Can you be more specific about how she behaves and her personality?
Homeschooled because it didn't work out at school and if not, why?
Does she lie or steal - or is she mainly defiant?
How young did this begin?
What's the scariest thing she's ever done? Just trying to help you decode this a bit!