http://voices.yahoo.com/opposition-defiance-10899191.html
But, frankly, I smell a rat in this discussion. This "disorder" is not recognized by the A.P.A., but by something called "The American Academy of Child and Oppositional Psychiatry." What's that? Sounds like a fringe group of psychiatrists who want to help some incompetent parents and teachers dope their bright, energetic, inquisitive children. And I say this not because the group is smaller and newer than the ones whose journals we researched when I was in college, but because their definitions for the "disorder" they want to diagnose and "treat" are so fuzzy. Take another look...
- Frequent temper tantrums
- Excessive arguing with adults
- Often questioning rules
- Active defiance and refusal to comply with adult requests and rules
- Deliberate attempts to annoy or upset people
- Blaming others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
- Often being touchy or easily annoyed by others
- Frequent anger and resentment
- Mean and hateful talking when upset
- Spiteful attitude and revenge seeking
I find myself reminded of last week's news, from Mississippi of all places (it used to be a good, sparsely populated, live-and-let-live state), that someone seriously proposed a bill in the state legislature that would make spanking a child a crime. I was spanked, as a child, by all kinds of other adults as well as my parents. I think some of these spankings were unjustified; I think some of them were emotional outbursts on the part of adults who'd been frustrated in their adult careers. I don't think they did me any permanent harm. Then I read reports about the "medicated" children who, if unable to steal guns, have burned down buildings or physically attacked their parents and parent-substitutes. I see no room for doubt that "medication" has done those children permanent harm. (Not to mention the other children at their schools.)
Shortly after the Columbine school massacre, in a book called How to Overthrow the Government, Arianna Huffington reported on the reason why "Columbine" is the name that you've heard endlessly repeated. There were four different cases in that year of a child taking a gun to school and shooting classmates and teachers before killing himself. All five of the children were boys...and Columbine was the school where two boys were involved, and one of the boys had not been "medicated" for either depression or hyperactivity. Columbine was the school where one "medicated" child had a friend. Fantasies about the school building burning down may be shared, talked about, sung about, and made into games at most middle schools, but actually setting the fire, or shooting people at school, is a symptom of so-called Prozac Dementia.
Are there children who grow up to become violent because they've been physically abused? There are, but they've survived worse things than spankings.
Are there children who learn to use verbal abuse to argue for their own way and/or dump their frustrations onto adults? There are; I was one of them. I enjoyed having a mean mouth and gloated when I was able to reduce an annoying teacher to a level of emotionality where the teacher would feel a need to spank me, thus proving that whatever undeserved power this teacher had over me (or another child) did not come from superior intelligence. Do these children have a "disorder"? No; they have learned a behavior that may serve their purposes better than anything the adults in their lives are likely to suggest as alternatives.
If and when the adults back off, these children can learn better language strategies. If verbally fluent enough to be verbal bullies, they'll probably appreciate a book by a nonjudgmental communications expert more than anything that's likely to come from a clinical psychologist. You Can't Say That to Me is the book in the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series the author recommended, after the series was complete, as a "first book." The one that worked for me was The Last Word On the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense. Both are written for adults, but neither is really beyond the grasp of even a sixth grade verbal abuse champion.
Parents who have inadvertently raised a verbal kickboxer, or teachers who have to deal with one, should beware of efforts to market and test "medications," or even market the services of psychotherapists, to this type of child. You can take it from me--as long as you are in oppositional or confrontational mode, the only way you can "win" with this child is to use superior physical force, whether by hitting the child, drugging the child, confining the child, or whatever else.
This child is undoubtedly bored at school and has hours on end to think of how best to annoy, embarrass, and if possible humiliate you. The more antagonistic his or her relationships become, the more motivated this child will be to cause you pain. Kids have very little capacity for empathy before puberty; they may feel some affection for a parent, grandparent, pet, or at best a sibling, but what the sixth grade verbal kickboxer has in the way of friends is more of an alliance with other little verbal bullies whose avowed goal is to give Teacher a nervous breakdown. Competent teachers can survive this kind of attack even when a whole class get into it, but let's just say that the kind of learning the adult is there to facilitate is not going to take place in this atmosphere.
If the adult victim of a juvenile verbal abuser is going to "win," it will be by avoiding antagonism altogether. Use the "Gentle Art" strategies for evading the hostility in what the abuser says to you with a completely non-confrontational reply. This will probably put you several steps ahead of this child's other victims. Buy a spare "Gentle Art" book and leave one copy lying about where the child can find it. Don't say anything, unless you can tell a whole class "When you've finished the test, feel free to read any of the books on that shelf." It's hard to imagine a sixth grade verbal kickboxing champion who wouldn't be interested in reading about verbal karate.
It wasn't possible for the teachers who were my primary victims to use this strategy, because they hadn't discovered the "Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" books themselves. It's possible for today's teachers to buy these books at reasonable prices. Even if the sixth grade verbal abuser has already absorbed as much as he or she is ever going to absorb from the official sixth grade curriculum, this new development means that it's also possible for this child to learn something valuable in grade six.
What if "oppositional and defiant" behavior is not part of the local culture, is not something a few verbally gifted children (like my brother and me) take pride in showing off to impress other kids, and is in fact part of a learning disorder, as it was for Peter Flom? In that case I'd still recommend using verbal self-defense, rather than labelling the behavior a "disorder." This child does have a "disorder" that needs to be addressed; mislabelling won't help you address the actual problem.
Some "oppositional and defiant" kids aren't merely verbal bullies. If they're large, fast-growing children...some of my favorite children are early bloomers who don't like being stereotyped as bullies, but there's a reason why that stereotype exists, especially if the frustrated child is not verbally fluent.
Even physical bullying can take more subtle forms than some adults like to believe children are capable of working out. I remember an unlikely, mostly unspoken, alliance with a large, lazy boy in junior high school, against The Teacher Everyone Loved To Hate. Eighth grade algebra wasn't even required, but all kids who wanted to be seen as bright signed up for it, and it was taught by this very consciously and deliberately obnoxious old man who made us set up our own equations, and solve them, and then deducted points for penmanship. He bragged to our class, "Last year it was not possible for me to give out one A on a report card!" So two of us goody-goody girls set out to force this old geek to put A's on our report cards, and meanwhile this boy was deflecting the teacher's hostility from the rest of us by deliberately talking back, or even shooting spitballs, and being led outside for a paddling almost every day. He was already close to six feet tall; teacher, as I recall, had never got past five feet. The big boy would come in from being paddled, grin, and cheerfully tell the rest of us that he thought the old grouch was feeling better now. We didn't force the old fossil to retire, but we certainly pushed him closer to it.
I love those stereotype-busting early bloomers who decide "My strength is not for hurting" at an early age. Unfortunately some fast-growing kids do buy into the stereotype, and direct their hostilities toward smaller children rather than adults. Sometimes they're the ones with major learning disabilities. Sometimes, if adults can defuse the violence, their learning disabilities can be identified and overcome. It's not done by drugs or by mislabelling. If a big, tough boy with this tendency to dump on smaller kids is going to get the benefit of the intelligence with which he was born, it'll be because some adult just stopped opposing him, stopped trying to "win" or "get the upper hand," conceded that the boy was right about some things, and gave the boy a chance to learn things...instead of sullenly resenting the other children who learned the same things so much more easily.
If you're an adult who works with children, please don't rush to declare their self-will any kind of "disorder." Join me in demanding that "The American Academy of Child and Oppositional Psychiatry" define "oppositional and defiant disorder" in terms that clearly distinguish it from the oppositional and defiant behavior that can be expected from almost all children. (Frequency of hostilities is not enough to make this distinction; children may show hostility more often because they're under more stress.)
If you're a teenager who has been labelled "oppositional and defiant," you're right, up to a point--this label was slapped on you because some adult who was less intelligent than you felt frustrated by you, and it is verbally abusive, even if you've not been physically abused with "medication." You have as much right to fight back as you'd have to fight back against a mugger, molester, or schoolyard bully. However, even if you're one of the mostly male people who really enjoy a good fight, fighting is usually not an ideal strategy for reaching your actual goals. Very likely you are more intelligent than the verbal bully who's mislabelling you, so it's not altogether unreasonable to expect that you should take the first step toward reducing the amount of violence in your life. Learning some verbal karate moves is a good place to start.
Although I've resold a few "Gentle Art" books, and passed a few on to students, they've not been Books You Can Buy From Me because Suzette Haden Elgin has been selling them herself--up until around age 75, when she really retired. Check with her colleague, Stephen Marsh, who's currently operating www.adrr.com. If new copies of these books aren't available at prices that include more than a 10% payback to Dr. Elgin, then used copies will become Books You Can Buy From Me.
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