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A guide to realizing if your child is at-risk, displaying self-destructive behaviors, and needs your help and intervention.
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Learn more how Total Transformation, an at-home program for parents, can help your troubled and struggling teen and heal your family
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Behavior Problems & Behavioral Disorders
More Information on Teen Behavior Problems - Helpful Parenting Strategies Anger in Our Teens & in Ourselves - Conduct Disorder - Teen Violence Bullying - What Parents & Teachers Should Know - A Father's Critical Role
How can you tell if your teen's behavior is a problem? Could it be just 'normal teenage rebellion'?
Is it a behavioral disorder such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), a pattern of negative, defiant and disobedient behavior, or Conduct Disorder, where your child repeatedly and persistently violates rules and the rights of others without concern or empathy?
Perhaps the most important questions for parents to consider are,
How much distress, disruption, and heartache are your child's problems causing?
How are your child's problems
affecting the family, your marriage, you, the child himself/herself?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision of the American Psychiatric Association defines oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) as a recurrent pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient, and hostile behavior toward authority figures that persists for at least 6 months.
Behaviors included in the definition are the following:
ODD is usually diagnosed when a child has a persistent or consistent pattern of disobedience and hostility toward parents, teachers, or other adults. The primary behavioral difficulty is the consistent pattern of refusing to follow commands or requests by adults.
Children with ODD often are
The criteria for ODD are met only when the problem behaviors occur more frequently in the child than in other children of the same age and developmental level. These behaviors cause significant difficulties with family and friends, and the oppositional behaviors are the same both at home and in school. Sometimes, ODD may be a precursor of a conduct disorder.
Risk factors for teen behavior problems include:
Family instability, including economic stress, parental mental illness, harshly punitive behaviors, inconsistent parenting practices, multiple moves, and divorce may also contribute to the development of oppositional and defiant behaviors.
ODD is not diagnosed if the problematic behaviors occur exclusively with a mood or psychotic disorder.
The following interventions have been used to help replace defiant, oppositional behavior with responsible behavior:
In addition, the following parenting strategies are helpful:
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Boundaries with Teens: When To Say Yes, How To Say No by John Townsend To help teenagers grow into healthy adults, parents and youth workers need to teach them how to take responsibility for their behavior, their values, and their lives. Dr. Townsend gives important keys for establishing healthy boundaries --- the bedrock of good relationships, maturity, safety, and growth for teens and the adults in their lives. Boundaries with Teens offers help in raising teens to take responsibility for their actions, attitudes, and emotions.
Boundaries with Kids: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Children by Henry Cloud, & John Townsend Boundaries with Kids will help you bring control to an out-of-control family life, setting limits while still being a loving parent.
More Information on Behavior Problems
Adolescent Risk-Taking ~ Adolescent risk-taking only becomes negative when the risks are dangerous and damaging to self and others. Healthy risks -- often understood as 'challenges' -- can turn unhealthy risks in a more positive direction, or prevent them from ever taking place.
The Broad Continuum of Conduct and Behavioral Problems (pdf) ~ Information from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Children and Lying ~ Information from the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Compulsive Lying ~ There are some fundamental reasons for compulsive lying: fear, habit, modeling, and overpredicting a reaction. Lying is a behavior learned in childhood.
Drinking or using drugs before 15 triples risk of becoming addict or criminal ~ Even children who had shown no signs of problem behavior while they were young were more likely to go on to become addicted to drink or drugs, contract sexually transmitted diseases, and have a criminal record, if they took drugs or drank on 'multiple occasions' in their early teens.
The Highly Prized Child ~ Pampered, privileged, and petulant, who are these children in charge and what are the best methods for parents and therapists to work with them?
Learning to Lie ~ Kids lie early, often, and for all sorts of reasons -- to avoid punishment, to bond with friends, to gain a sense of control. How does this habit of lying develop? They are just copying their parents.
Living and Teaching Right From Wrong ~ Young people growing up in today's culture have lost their sense of right and wrong as they grow up in the world without a clear sense of moral direction. They seek to find their way on their own, only to be molded and shaped by a postmodern media culture and circle of peers, equally lost and confused.
Mis-Diagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children ~ Many gifted and talented children (and adults) are being misdiagnosed by mental health professionals. The most common misdiagnoses are: ADHD, ODD, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and mood disorders (such as depression and bipolar disorder).
Oppositional Defiant Disorder ~ The following three classes of behavior constitute hallmarks of both oppositional and conduct problems: (1) noncompliance with commands, (2) emotional overreaction to life events, no matter how small, and (3) failure to take responsibility for one's own actions.
Parent Abuse: The Abuse of Parents by Their Teenage Children (pdf) ~ Parent abuse is any harmful act by a teenage child intended to gain power and control over a parent. The abuse can be physical, psychological, or financial.
Solutions to Oppositional Defiant Disorder ~ It is important to use the authority vested in us as parents to establish consistent limits and consequences, and to distinguish boundaries within the family.
Spoiling, not chemistry, root of teen tantrums ~ Extend a child's dependency indefinitely and pamper, indulge, and otherwise "spoil" the child throughout his/her extended dependency, and you're likely to wind up with a toddler in a teenager's body.
Stereotypes can fuel teen misbehavior ~ By thinking risk-taking or rebelliousness is normal for teenagers and conveying that to their children, parents might add to other messages from society that make teenagers feel abnormal if they are not willing to take risks or break laws. This can mean, for example, that when parents expect teens to drink before they turn 21 or to engage in other risky behaviors, kids are less likely to resist societal pressures to do so.
Stereotypes of troublemaking kids off the mark ~ "Hanging out" and failing in school are far more likely to predict which teens get in trouble than income, ethnic group, and having a single parent.
Suburban Blues ~ Money does not equal happiness, especially for the young. Affluent kids suffer higher rates of depression, but time with family can help.
When Inappropriate Behavior is Just Plain Wrong ~ It's absolutely critical that we are willing to use a moral language with kids when discussing the consequences of their behavior. There are such things as good and bad behaviors — not just choices that lead to instrumental consequences, such as being popular and getting along. Some actions are wrong no matter what. Even if everyone in school thought that stealing was the coolest thing in the world, it would still be wrong.
When Your Teen Rejects Your Values ~ God does not hold us responsible for all of our teenager's actions. But He does hold us accountable for the way in which we relate to them as parents -- with unconditional love, but uncompromising commitment to responsible maturity.
Why Kids and Teens Steal ~ Whatever the underlying cause (e.g., peer pressure, need, desire, anger, drug use), if stealing is becoming a habit, parents should speak with a doctor or therapist to get to the underlying issue.
The Importance of Family Dinners (pdf) ~ The more often children have dinners with their parents, the less likely they are to drink alcohol, use drugs, or have behavior problems.
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