No positive moments with hateful DD?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, could she have Oppositional defiant disorder? My youngest has this. Her antagonism is mostly directed at me since I’m the primary caregiver (work part time and husband travels a lot for work). I’m asking because you say she has been this way since she was 2. After raising 3 kids with no issues whatsoever, my 4th has given me stress beyond anything I could imagine. With a diagnosis it has gotten much easier. I know exactly how to react/respond (or not react/respond) to her. Her older siblings and my husband also know how to react when they see her oppositional defiant disorder taking over. Our house became so much more peaceful and DD is like a different kid. No, it’s not perfect, but we can handle it with the tools we were given. BTW,it’s not your fault if she has this disorder. My daughter acted just like what you described your daughter and I did nothing but love her like I love all my kids.

This is exactly why judgy parents should STFU. Just because a parent was lucky and their children were easygoing and responded to rules and authority, doesn’t mean other parents were so lucky. Difficult children are born every day and loving parents have to deal with them AND be judged by other parents.

Maybe your blood pressure would be lower if you looked to SCIENCE as well as "judgey parents", because if you did, you'd know that it's not that the vast majority of clinically evaluated kids the parents call "difficult", when you trace back to their upbringing, family dynamics, life events, and the family's response to the behaviors seen as "difficult" whenever they started, you find explanations that are NOT about the child just being born that way. It's not about blaming parents - most parents do the best they can in parenting each child, with what they know and what they have. But pretending kids are "just bad" or "just difficult" and the parenting style, methods, history has nothing to do with it doesn't help the parent or the child, and usually hurts both because it's usually clear how parent and child got to the relationship they now have.

So you really have to decide "Are you trying to solve the problem?" or "Are you just trying to not make parents "feel bad" and chalk it all up to "Wow, you just got a really difficult kid"", which then leads to people like OP not taking responsibility at all and feeling justified in "shipping DD off to boarding school" or otherwise just sending her away, which would no doubt mess her up dramatically more than she already may be. This thread is 6 pages and OP hasn't responded AT ALL to any of the great advice others have given her about what she needs to do first, starting with her own therapy and really understanding that this was a journey to this point with DD and if she really wants to fix it or improve it, she's got to own her part in creating it. ZERO response to any of that advice with concrete ideas mentioned. And also OP hasn't answered any questions about what previous docs and therapists have said about why her relationship with her daughter is as it is or what her DD's diagnosis/diagnoses have been.

Just like anything else in life, a key player not willing to either be honest about or own and take responsibility for the roles they may have played in whatever they're tryng to fix now, it rarely improves or gets fixed and often gets worse.