ODD

Hi my name is Sharon, i have just found this great site. I have a 4 year old son, Kobi. I was diagnosed with post natal depression when kobi was about 6 months old. My husband took the easy way out as he didnt know how to deal with it. We were together for 10 years & married for 5 & a half years, we are now divorced. Kobi has recently been diagnosed with ODD, but that doesnt make life any easier having a name for his behaviour. He is very hard to handle & EXTREMLY defiant. As i live in a small town help is almost non exsistant, so if any one has any ideas for what helps them i would love to hear what works for you.

Sharon :wall:

Hi & Welcome Sharon...

ODD is a hard one. I had a look into it a bit because my DD is extremely defiant. Its apparently part of Autism which she has.

Our OT (Occupational Therapist) has helped us work on some of her emotional regulation issues and that has been good. The OT is teaching her how to physically force herself to calm down. We have taken the word "No" out of our vocabulary and now use alternatives. So instead of saying "No, you can't have the juice", I say "Matilda, you can have water or rice milk to drink". And simple things like that which have helped us avoid massive fights.

We also found diet to be huge. We have done the Failsafe diet and found certain preservatives and natural substances affect my daughter's behaviours. Now we can avoid those triggers by changing our diets. We went chemical and preservative free and started on a whole foods diet which was amazing. We found our daughter reacts severely to apple juice. She could have lemonaide, or cordial and not react as she does with apple juice.... so its good to find the trigger and be able to say "we'll have something else thanks"

Hi Christy,
thanks for your reply. i am currently waiting for the OT to contact me so we can make an appointment. Like you i have also restricted Kobis diet cutting out 6 colourings, (do you know more of what to cut out?). Sometimes it doesnt seem to make any differance to his behaviour but sometimes it does?????? One of the hardest things is when Kobi goes to his dads place his dad lets him eat what he wants. As we are not allowed to have any direct contact i have written him a few letters asking him, then telling him to avoid these colourings but he just wont do as i have asked. I think he is being spiteful to make things hard. Then it is hard when Kobi comes home as i then have to deal with the fallout of all the crap his father has let him eat.

I actually did a special diet for elimination as well. We did the RPA Friendly food diet. My daughter has food allergies and we found intolerances while we were doing it as well! She's allergic to cows milk, bananas and oats. But we found that she reacts to soy as well, just didn't test positive for it in her testing, so we say she's intolerant to it. At the moment, our house is a no number house. Its hard work, but she is much much worse when she has food with additives in it. I have to carry around food alternatives where ever we go, jic someone is offering something and I have to say "sorry... she can't have it".