Possible 5yr old with ODD and / or ADHD

carbon

New Member
My Son is about to be 5yrs old this month and my husband and I are dealing with the last year possibly 2 years with our son's behavior. We heard for the last two years that our son was just all boy and his behavior progressively gets worse. Examples are as follows

Back talk to an extreme; you ask or tell him to do something he will either repeat it to get a response from you, scream cry if he doesn't get his way, or say things like he hates you, or he doesn't love you.
He is obsessed with curse words and negitivity.
If you put him in his room for time out he will stomp and scream all the way upstairs get to his room and slam his door..(I understand if he was a teenager but he is 5 and has been doing this for at least a year)
He says he doesn't have to listen to anyone
When he gets in trouble and he knows your upset with him he will go from crying and upset he is in trouble to laughing at you about it.
THE LIST GOES ON!!!!!

We have an appointment the end of this month to talk to the doctor to see what could be wrong with him. WE have done some research and believe that he could possibly have ODD (oppositional defient disorder). We have a daughter who is ADHD so we are pretty sure that our son is not ADHD based on our 7 year experience with our daughter.

If anyone has any information or advice it would greatly beneifitical for my husband and I.
 

nvts

Active Member
Hi Carbon! Welcome to the crowd! A lot of us have kids that sound a lot like yours. There could be quite a few diagnosis' that could fit your little guy - none of us are doctors so no one can say what it is, but experiences can help whittle things down.

I would recommend that you take him to see a neuropsychologist. The would run a battery of tests (over a few days), interview you, observe him and let you know what is going on. In my humble opinion, ODD is more of a symptom of something else rather than an absolute diagnosis.

Have you ever noted issues surrounding tastes, smells, textures of clothes (I call it the itchy tag syndrome - where you have to cut the tags off the shirt because it bothers him) etc.? How were his developmental milestones?

Again, welcome to the crowd - it may be a little slow, weekends are fairly quiet (all the difficult child's are home) but more will stop to say hello!

Beth
 
T

TeDo

Guest
What kind of doctor are you going to be seeing? I highly recommend you find a good pediatric psychiatrist/psychologist. It may have been "typical boy stuff" at first but since it is progressing I agree it probably isn't anymore. Have you ever tried to figure out WHY he does/says what he does? For me that was huge. My son was diagnosed with ADHD at 4 years old and ODD was added during elementary school. We have now discovered that it was never ODD at all but has Autism Spectrum Disorder. What looked like ODD was really that he didn't "understand" what was being asked of him, how he was "supposed" to react to requests, handling emotions in "acceptable" ways, etc. I don't know if any of this would have come to light if I hadn't started working hard to figure out the WHY of his behavior.

Read the book "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene.

Others will be along to give you there "expertise". You have come to the right place. Welcome to the "family".
 
H

HaoZi

Guest
Also remember that boys and girls can express ADHD very differently from each other.
 
Top