Do you get faced with Oppositional-defiant disorder behavior often? I think we sometimes influence kids to act this way by the way we interact with them. Our conventional wisdom about discipline dictates we pay attention when they misbehave.
What does the child who doesn’t sit still and pay attention as well as others experience? “Why can’t you sit still?” “You don’t follow the rules?”
It doesn’t take long before they figure it out. Even if they try their best, it’s still not good enough. They can’t win in the existing rule structure. Mess up once and you go from green to yellow. Twice and you go from yellow to red. Now it’s a bad day. Except chances are, they did just fine except for a few minutes a couple of times. But now the adults are telling lies about your behavior. They say you don’t follow the rules, can’t sit still, don’t pay attention, etc.
The words we use are like loading software onto their hard drives. Programming them with self-fulfilling prophesies. If they messed up twice five minutes each time in a 7 hour school day, that would be ten of 420 minutes, right? That’s less than 2.5%, or 97.5% doing just fine, except it seems not to count. The adults only seem to see the problem moments, not all the efforts and times when the problems are not occurring.
So why bother? If you can’t win in the existing rule structure, why not change the rules so you can win? I’ll show you bad. Now my rule for winning is to win by not doing. And you can’t make me. So now I win every time by not doing. That’ll teach you for being mean to me. I can also make a mockery of the system, and get more satisfaction out of disrupting the class or home environment. More wins for me. You lose.
If a kid thinks the rewards for trying are less likely to be realized than the rewards for not trying and avoiding the pain of failure, I think they can get trained to be oppositional and defiant. What do you think? How do you combat or correct this problem of ODD?
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How else do you think Oppositional-defiant disorder behavior develops?
