Hi and welcome.
Every child is different. There is no uniform label, no uniform treatment, no "insert Tab A into Slot B" type of perfect fit to permanently fix anything. All we can do is try to find whatever we can to help as much as we can, and hope to fudge the difference. Yet we live in a world where science and engineering have made amazing advances in so many areas. This makes us feel we are entitled to perfect answers, to perfect solutions. But medical science is very inexact. We are trying to expect 100% exactness and perfection when we're trying to categorise the human body and the human mind. Very complex. There is a principle of science which states that no organism is capable of understanding anything as complex as itself (or more complex). And yet here we are, trying to fathom the human body and mind. Of course we can get SOME understanding, but when you try to generalise and apply that broadly, you're only going to get an approximation at best.
When it comes to our own child, we don't want an approximation. We want answers from the experts. We look to them in hope, for some glimmer of understanding that we can use, to get help and turn around the appalling mess we find ourselves increasingly in. We get told different things by different people, we get confused by mixed messages, we feel we HAVE to give credence to what each expert says because, well - they're experts.
What we forget - WE are experts, in our own children. That doesn't mean we ignore all experts, but it means we take what they tell us into account, along with our own expert understanding. We accept our place on the team, when it comes to getting answers about our own children.
This need not be depressing news. What it means, is we have to learn to trust ourselves and to put in the effort ourselves. Get out of the expectation that someone else (knight on white charger, or "mummy") will sweep in and fix it all for us. Instead, we need to step up to the plate and become the driving force and coordinator of our child's help team.
It can be scary to contemplate this. Under some circumstances, it is challenging, especially if you're a single parent dealing with loss of credibility due to character asassination and social stigma. It can be hard work because it requires the same degree of organisation and professional paperwork that we expect of any of our child's specialists. But put in that effort and it soon becomes second nature, and also begins to bring results.
Those results may not be perfect, but they will be the best you can get. And it is often better than anything else any experts alone could bring.
Being personally involved in your child's management, being the coordinator of the team, brings the personal and more accurate touch to the expert line-up of assistance. This is where the approximation that is the best we can expect from professionals who don't exactly live with our child, can be refined and modified from a torch beam to a laser beam.
Have faith in yourself and your knowledge of your child. Use this to guide you to the best that professional help can give you, and use it all together. Value yourself and also look after yourself. If you are on a plane and the oxygen masks drop down, sensible safety instructions tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on your child. If you put the oxygen mask on your child first, you run the risk of passing out from lack of oxygen before you can put your own mask on. You would then have achild who is possibly less aware of the dangers, less able to look after himself and care for himself, certainly less able to put the oxygen mask onto you. As a result, the risk to you again becomes a great risk to your child.
So tend to your own needs, in order to better meet your child's needs.
As far as the ODD type of behaviour - yes, we got given this label also. A teacher of difficult child 3's insisted that he had ODD and of course she was an expert - a teacher knows about these things. But I looked it up online. Yes, ODD did seem to fit except that the concept of "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" implied that the child was choosing to argue, choosing to do exactly the wrong thing out of some personal drive to be difficult. It was implied that the child had choice, and was choosing to be bad. This didn't fit MY child, there seemed to be something else driving him. But the concept of ODD as presented to me, also came with the solution of "you can solve this by punishing the bad behaviour, because if the child is choosing to do the wrong thing on purpose, then the child can be trained like a performing seal to do the right thing."
That's why I really loathe the ODD label. It gets handed out too readily, as if it's an easy answer equipped with the obvious solution of firm discipline and handy scapegoats in over-indulgent, slack parents.
That's not to say that ODD doesn't exist as a genuine disorder, standing alone. I'm not a psychiatrist, I won't dismiss the existence of a condition which comes with its own DSM IV criteria. However, at least as far as difficult child 3 is concerned (and in my opinion on a lot of kids we've 'met' on this site) I do feel that ODD probably doesn't exist in a lot of kids who get this label, what there is with these kids is something which resembles ODD but is in reality merely a facet of the underlying disorder which requires the same individual handlnig i was talking about before. Ironically, the firm strict handling we get lured into so often, is what can make this ODD-like presentation much much worse. We need to step back from trying to over-control our wayward child and find another, easier and more effective way.
If what you are currently doing is not working, then why continue to do it? Sometimes you need to take a step back and look again at what you are dealing with and where you are trying to get to. Not all experts are correct, sometimes they are partly correct only. We need to gather the information, re-examine it and try to find a better solution.
Here is a good starting point if you're told your child presents as ODD - get your hands on a copy of "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. Again it's not a cure, but it can really help. It shows a different approach and often gives a clearer understanding of what is happening in the child's head. When a parent is equipped with that better understanding it can make it easier to respond more productively to your child's difficult behaviour.
I found it made our life easier. difficult child 3 is still a handful at times, but tis is because of the underlying condition whichis why he IS different, why for him life is more challenging. He will always be more frustrated than others, always find life more difficult. But now we have a better understanding why, it means we have stopped chastising him for things he really can't control, we have stopped seeing his loud outbursts as deliberate defiance and personal insult and instead seen them as difficult child 3's responses to anxiety and frustration. We also now recognise thatfor difficult child 3, there is no difference between individuals in status - for him, any child is equal in status to any adult. He will be polite to people who are polite to him, because other people's behaviour is what he models HIS behaviour on. SO far form being difficult and defiant purely to be challenging, he is in fact desperately trying to be like everyone else. He fails at this, because his autism means he is NOT naturally good at understanding how people interact. He can observe and attempt, but he struggles with it because his brain lacks certain abilities, which he can only learnt hrough laborious tuition.
So he wants to be like everyone else. Perhaps a teacher, a person in authority whose job it clearly is to give him an education, is who he chooses to follow as an example of how to behave. Or a parent, perhaps. Someone in authority who has been set up on a pedestal for the child to follow. Good, you would think? Not necessarily. Listen next chance you have, to how adults in this position talk to children under them. Listen to parents in the mall, to teachers in the playground. "If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times, get to your seat and get to work. I don't want to hear another word out of you until I say so." Or "OK, Simpson, why were you late to school THIS time? And don't give me any malarkey about missing the bus, I just don't believe you."
We accept this from someone in a position of authority, but if the tables turn and the child says this back TO the same person in authority, of course it is read as "opposiotnal" and "defiant". But in reality, all the child is doing, is dishing out what he has been taught. The child is following the set example. Such achild will be genuinely surprised at getting into trouble for tis and will consider any discipline for tis behaviour, as monstrously unfair.
A hallmark of this - when the child has been donig it from a very young age. This is the first position, not a later position. With this pattern of behaviour, the child doesn't start out as polite and well-behaved and later turn into a rude, cheeky brat. Instead, you have a child who has NEVER understood that adults and children occupy different positions on the status ladder, because such a child is literally blind to differences in status.
An example from difficult child 3 - he was a new kid in Kindergarten. Teachers had been warned to not startle him and to give him support and warning of change. And to especially protect him from sudden loud noises. But one teacher who clearly beleived she knew better, ignored this and began ringing a handbell in the school playground, right behind difficult child 3. Being startled, he was upset and naturally (for him) felt that the teacher was doing it purely to upset him (such kids are like babies socially, in believing that everything in the world revolves around them). He turned around to the teacher and shouted at her, "EXCUUUUSE ME!" (which is how he had previously heard this teacher deal with loud students).
The teacher, now losing face in front of a playground full of delighted students, tried to save face by saying witheringly, "No, you're supposed to excuse ME," but difficult child 3 simply turned his back on her as she was talking to him, and stalked off. He was 5 years old but that didn't matter. In his mind another individual had made a loud noise which upset him so he told this person off in exactly the same way he had heard her tell off other kids. And having done so, that was it, no more to be said (or to listen to).
naturally, this makes such a kid seem to be very rude, very defiant and a handful. But form difficult child 3's point of view, it was all very natural, very logical.
To try to handle tis sort of behaviour, you DO NOT try to punish it. You will get worse than nowhere, because the child will see your punishing behaviour as the way he must behave, and he will then try to punish YOU.
Tricky.
So read the book, it explains it all much better than I can.
Keep good notes (remember you have to be professional in your outlook in order to help your child). These notes can be in the form of your own diary, and tey can give you hope when you read back over them after months or years, and see how far you have come. They can also help you screen for behaviour patterns and sometimes help you quickly nip any developing prolems in the bud.
There is so much you can do, and on this site there is a wealth of experience from a wide range of parents and caregivers. Inicluding your own.
Marg
It's like there's this window that opens and if you don't check it out, you'll miss it. 
