A practical lesson in ODD management

ODD reared it's ugly head at our house yesterday. Now, mind you it's mixed these days with the temperament of a 16 year old boy/man.

Trying to get Matt to get a job. He wants a job. He just doesn't want us to tell him to get a job. But if we don't ride his butt, he doesn't fill out any applications. He flat out said, "I'm not going to do anything because you want me to." That is ODD in a nutshell. Also, teenage boy.

Mind you, Matt's ODD has been tempered with years of behavioral modification/anger management and maturity. It's a process not an immediate fix. Yesterday could have been all out blow out, but he just ignored me and said, "Quit yelling at me."

Now, I do know from living with him that yelling frustrates him. I don't want him frustrated. So that is my queue to back off. Part of anger management. It has to come from both directions. That means I need to regroup and try a different tactic. So you see, it's not always HIM. Sometimes it is me, too.

At 16, he thinks he knows everything. Of course, what teenager doesn't. That isn't ADHD or ADD. But how you get him to do what is right is all about managing the ADHD and ODD and about letting him become a man, too, and make some decisions and mistakes.

ODD management is about picking your battles. Letting the small things go and saving for the things that really matter. For example, his application has to be filled out correctly. So the pencil one has to be thrown out and he has to re-do it all in pen. Re-do is HELL for ADHD because they thought it was already done. I saved my battle for the application because remember there are two parts to a job. The dress and the application.

Yes, he had jeans on, but he had a belt on and his Sperry's. And in what I thought was an innovative move, a Gamecock t-shirt. He was applying at a sports bar. That made me compliment him on his original thinking to wear a team t-shirt to apply at a sports bar. He smiled. It made him feel good.

Maybe we fought about the application to get it right, but he got to dress himself and got a compliment out of it for ingenuity. That made it alright. He was self-satisfied. I was satisfied. ODD put to bed, and he got some confidence.