Zenster, there’s no “strictly” about it. The difference between me feeling bad and me being clinically depressed is that in the second case there actually is something chemical going on. Now, arguing that too many people who don’t have something chemical going on are being diagnosed is one thing, but to write off the conditions completely because you have your own doubts of the veracity of the mental health profession is just ignorant and arrogant.
Eonwe, do you see me personally attacking you in this thread? No? Then kindly lay off.
If I was not prepared to gain further insight into this issue, I would have held my beliefs firmly in my mind and not bothered to open this thread, where they stood a chance of being challenged.
There are pathological chemical imbalances traceable to physiological origins and then there are external influences that can trigger many of the same symptoms. Witness the ability for intense parental abuse to “trigger” schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder.
I’m trying to find out how many children exhibiting ODD and CD symptomology come from homes that demonstrate strong tendencies to produce this sort of irrational behavior (i.e., physical or emotional abuse, absentee parents, parental drug abuse, etc.).
Feel free to address the actual issue at hand as opposed to introducing personalities into this discussion. If you are unable to do so, take it to the Pit. I need to set my watch anyway.
Even if those statistics were available, I’m not sure how accurate they’d really be. Sure, it’d be easy enough to quantify “bad” parenting if you just took them off the lists of child protective agencies maybe, kids removed for abuse? There’s a bad parenting style, yessirree.
Who’s going to quantify the majority though? If there are ‘homes that demonstrate strong tendencies to produce this sort of irrational behavior’ how does it follow that not all the siblings have a disorder if one does? Wouldn’t the fact that this sibling has OCD or ADHD but that one doesn’t sort of indicate, since the parenting environment is the same, that there’s indeed a biological factor involved?
OK - define for me, please: Which would you consider a bad parent:
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Physical Abuse
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Spanks Too Much
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Doesn’t Spank Enough
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Doesn’t Spank At All
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Deliberately Neglected
Or are ALL of the above bad parents? Because your point of view will skew the answer one way or the other.
Queen Tonya, kindly eliminate AD and ADHD references in further discussion. This thread deals with ODD and CD disorders.
I’d also be curious to see what percentage of children who are removed from their homes and placed in protective custody by CPS exhibit ODD and CD.
Zenster
it doesn’t work like that. ADD and ADHD are on the continuum for CD and ODD. So discussion of ADD and ADHD is appropriate in this thread whether you want to issue instructions and control debate or not.
When assessing the competency of parents you need to look at the interaction of child and parent. If a kid has untreated ADHD and is drifting towards ODD, then a competent parent may not be competent any more. It’s very hard to effectively parent a child who is out of control and for whom nothing, absolutely nothing works. All the normal tools of parenting are not effective and that’s when some parents spiral into abuse or neglect because the stress of living with a kid who is running wild is so high.
I’m aware that some families disintegrate as a consequence of having a child with a disorder so ‘intact nuclear family’ isn’t necessarily a good marker for competency in parenting. Good parenting cannot cure ADHD, CD or ODD and neither can ‘bad’ parenting cause it. For sure, it can help or it can aggravate but it is not as simple as assigning blame or giving parents training.
One of the diagnostic features is that the symptoms are present in all settings. If a kid displays ODD at school but not at home or vice versa, then it probably isn’t ODD.
Begging your pardon, Zenster - I know you want to keep AD issues out of this, even though they are kind of the same thing (Primaflora actually knows more about that than I do, so I’ll just leave it at that.)
However. There is at least one aspect of ADD that has not been addressed, and I think it’s an important one. People tend to focus on the word “deficit” and that’s really rather misleading, as it makes people think a person with ADD just can’t pay attention. People with ADD can often pay a great deal of attention to something - to the exclusion of everything else. If the thing they are paying attention to is not the priority item, that can cause a problem. To a person with ADD, all stimulus is equal stimulus. And we can’t always sort it out.
To give you a very simplistic example - have you ever worked somewhere that has background music? After a while, you sort of tune it out, right? You know it’s there, and if you make yourself focus on it, you can name that tune. For a few minutes after you return to what you’re doing, you are still aware of the music, but very quickly, it fades from your attention as you return your focus to the task at hand.
I can’t do that.
ADD/ADHD parents - it can go the other way, too. I was falsely diagnosed a couple of years ago. I had parents that said “No, there’s nothing wrong with my child - doing badly in school and being slightly annoying aren’t his fault at all!” The only thing they ever disciplined me for was doubting that I had ADD, which started about a year after I was diagnosed. So, we got a more thorough job. And, hey, I was right.
For the first time in a long time, it’s now my job to do better, not the medication’s. My grades are steadily improving.
I think this label came about because teachers had a tough time telling parents that their child is a spoiled, ill mannered little pain in the ass who needs a good beating, and that they as parents have failed miserably and should be strilized to prevent any chance of this from happening again.
Seriously, it is a way to describe a type of behavior. The child is simply refussing to follow directions and do any work in class. It is also easier then telling parent that the kid is a pain in the ass.
Moving this to Great Debates.
Please favor us with the selective thought that went into you deciding this. Obviously it’s not from reading any of what’s been posted in this thread, am I to presume these opinions of yours have been reached after extensive observation of ODD/CD kids?
Parent-blaming is never far out of fashion, congratulations on being trendy. It does fall a bit short on explaining where the ODD/CD kids with good parents come from, hmmm. Guess that’ll just remain a puzzle.
** Wrong. Ritalin is in the same class of stimulants as amphetamines are. Not that this should be considered an argument against them, merely that your statement is incorrect.
** Why doesn’t it “speed up” the rest of the brain too?
** This is actually true of stimulants in general. Children have what is known as a paradoxical response to many drugs, including stimulants: instead of becoming excited, they’re slightly sedated.
** Actually, that claim might be true in some cases. Certain artificial flavors and colors have been shown to have negative effects on cognition in a small portion of the population.
** I am so glad that the NAMI people have so successfully gotten their message out.
Before, we claimed without evidence that these conditions were the fault of parents. Now we claim without evidence that these conditions are physiological deficiencies. Oh, what a glorious new enlightenment we’re attained!
Which doesn’t explain why, at the advanced age of 31, Ritalin worked for me.
This isn’t true. ADHD is often comorbid with ODD and CD, but is not on a continuum with these disorders. It is distinct (see Loeber, Burke, Lahey, Winters & Zera, 2000).
This is also not correct, at least in terms of the diagnostic criteria for ODD.
Hentor
OK, I’ll retract that. It came from discussions with my paed last year in a time of great stress. I did go looking for cites and eeep everything I found supports you, not me. I do have a vague memory that Barkely says that ODD is on the ADHD continuum but I don’t have it here so I won’t argue the point.
I’ve got an idea – how’s about those of you without kids or without kids who are diagnosed with ADHD, ODD or CD make a firm blanket decision to NEVER use drugs with your kids? Works just fine for me and I sincerely hope it works for you and your children.
For me, after consulting a child psychiatrist, several child psychologists, a clinical child psychologist, a neuropsychologist and several paediatricians and a developmental paediatrician, after doing parenting courses and discussing my parenting with professionals, after doing an EEG and an MRI scan, after doing diets, behavioural modification and the like, I’m all about drugs.
At the heart of it was that my kid was suffering, really suffering. He spent his day fighting with everyone, learning nothing and trying so hard to behave. He had OCD, developing agoraphobia, anxiety disorder and attentional problems. He presented as ODD because he was so overwhelmingly unhappy, anxious and unable to manage himself. By the time he was seven, he was a heartbreaking kid.
Drugs gave him his life back. I wish it wasn’t so, I wish he didn’t need them but life’s a damned sight better with them than without.
I have never claimed that ODD was physiological, so your sarcasm is misplaced. I have noted (in several threads) a correlation between physical activities in the brain and ADHD (and have seen no contrary evidence) while also asserting that there are behavioral issues that need to be addressed regardless of the physiological situations. Since ODD is on the behavioral continuum of ADHD and I have noted that every kid I have encountered that has been diagnosed with ODD has also been diagnosed with ADHD, I suspect that some of the physiological contributions to ADHD also contribute to ODD (and will welcome evidence to the contrary). If you are claiming that ODD is merely the result of bad parenting, (which was the OP to which I replied) you need to provide some evidence. If you are simply making the claim that someone else has claimed that all such disorders are only chemical or physical, you should address their actual statements rather than quoting me out of context.
31? Past puberty, I presume?
Then you’re not subject to the paradoxical sedating effect it has on children. Certain stimulants – particularly amphetamines and drugs related to them – are known to produce intense focus and fascination on events. (Didn’t you all see the episode of “King of the Hill” where Bobby is placed on Ritalin?) A somewhat weaker effect is common to stimulants in general, which is why students take caffiene and “wake-up” pills to study.
** To your credit, this seems to be true. You’re refreshingly specific – perhaps I’ve just spent too much time trying to educate the less well informed. Apologies for any offense.
** The problem is that it’s not known what physiological causes, if any, contribute to ADHD. Treating the condition only as a collection of symptoms for the moment, it’s clear how an unusually low ability to concentrate and focus could lead to behavior problems consistent with ODD. Suggesting a physiological link does not seem necessary, at least to me.
** Possibly some are. Without actual evidence, I don’t think anyone can make claims about the set of people diagnosed with ODD. I can also imagine that brain abnormalities could contribute to some cases. Now, the question of how many cases are due to X, and how many to Y, I don’t believe can be answered at this time.
That is a very common claim. More precisely, it’s an extraordinarily common assumption that underlies many people’s claims.