Oppositional Defiance Disorder

I currently have a child who is 5 years old in my class. Let's call him "Gabe". Gabe is very smart. He should be in Kindergarten but his birthday falls in the wrong month. So he has come to my class to be bored out of his mind. Try as I might it's hard to keep him going on the same thing a 3 year old might like and visa versa.

I've had a really hard time with him coming into our class. Before him we had 2 boys with HUGE behavioural disorders and a few that just didn't listen. They went to Kindergarten, and some others moved. This led to the influx of newly trainable 3 year olds. Our room is allowed to have 24 children in it. About 10 too many when 16 of them are boys that are there EVERYDAY and we rotate 2-4 girls a day out of the 8 registered. Needless to say it is a busy boisterous in there everyday.

Gabe came to us from a home care situation. He was kicked out for causing too much trouble, hitting, attitude, etc. He came right before the Kindergarteners left and that was crazy since the oldest one beat him down a few times. So we get settled into a routine with the older ones gone. He has been diagnosed with ADHD and is medicated for it. I personally believe he has ODD as well. Today has been the worst day with him.

taken from here: http://www.guidancefacilitators.com/odd2.html

"Oppositional defiant children share many of the following characteristics:
· They possess a strong need for control, and will do just about anything to gain power.
Says NO to most requests or ignors you and does what he wants...
· They typically deny responsibility for their misbehavior and have little insight into how they impact others.
Even if I've seen him have a toy out, hit a child, do anything and call him on it he denies it then tries to blame someone else. A few days ago he tried to tell me voices in his head were making him do these things. No he's not schitzophrenic. I told him to tell the voices HE was the boss and he was responisible for them.
· The ODD child is socially exploitive and very quick to notice how others respond. He then uses these responses to his advantage in family or social environments, or both.
This has popped up on many occasions. He very quickly learned how to work the kids in the room. He picks at a few easily annoyed children, tries to argue with us, and has tried to sever a few friendships to put himself in the middle.

· These children tolerate a great deal of negativity – in fact they seem to thrive on large amounts of conflict, anger and negativity from others, and are frequently the winners in escalating battles of negativity.
He's most definitely already on the bad side of most of the teachers. They regard him warily or not at all. I try to greet him each day and treat him as his behaviour allows, but I admit I don't interact with him as much as I could.

His dad is a drug abuser that could be doing/saying who knows what. He hears his parents arguing when his dad is over. Also most of the kids in class don't like him won't let him play with them because of previous stunts he's pulled.

Many authorities on parenting have indicated that oppositional behavior is more prevalent when structure in the home is out of balance – when there is either too much structure or not enough. In an overly structured environment the parenting is rigid and inflexible. "

As stated above he has a volitale home environment where there isn't much structure from the father and ? with the mother. We are pretty rigid with him and obviously that hasn't been working.

When I got in at 9 am he was already in the office for hitting another child then running and hiding under a table to get away from the teacher. *Sigh* So the morning goes on as normal. We have only about 15 children today so it wasn't so crowded and my co-teacher actually had her craft ready so the kids rotated that and we had a fairly uneventful morning. Gabe's behavior was escalating. At first he was pestering others, then he took a few toys, then he saw one of the other children with a Nintendo DS and that kept all the rowdies quiet for a while.

It was then lunchtime and that went loudly, but pretty well. After lunch I REALLY had to go to the restroom. So after lights were out and all the kids were on their cots I WENT! Our bathroom is just outside our door so it shares a wall with my classroom. I hear my coteacher telling him to lay down and quit messing around. That's normal. Then she TELLS him to do it. Then I hear banging which turned out to be him climbing up on the remaining cots to get away from her. When I got back in there ( I had some issues) our Director was in there and he seemed to almost be asleep. She left, then my coworker left and it was my hour on watch.

I generally sit on gym mat on the floor. The table are only 36 inches high so not really comfy to sit at for long periods of time. Since he has come I sit next to him by the front door. During this downtime I'm usually working on craft stuff for the afternoon or homework. Gabe generally sleeps from 12-130. Today he was not going to sleep. I assume he decided he just wasn't going to do it and wanted to fight about it. After reminding him of what he was going to lose to day I gave him a chance to straighten out. In succession he lost 1. His sticker *prize box* 2. Rights to play DS in the afternoon 3. various minutes of the movie we were watching then lost altogether and was working on time out.

I have been thinking on this ODD for some time so I just googled how to control child with ODD and found the link above. I have to say the stuff worked! Obviously I can't change his home situation. He has 2 choices: When he runs away or crawls under the table, etc he can come back now or when he chooses to come out he with THEN do his time out.
I repeat what will happen and do NOT argue with him at all. Not even to try to reason or explain like I might with some of the others. He has already made up his mind and will not listen anyway.
If he hits, swears, runs off he starts out in the time out corner, he can then move up to the alone table where he has nothing to do but sit and watch everyone else, if he can do that okay then he can color or read, when he's done that I try to put him in a group of 1 or 2, if he does well with that I let him choose what he would like to do. Today he didn't get past step 3 but I didn't lose my cool again. I should get a freakin medal for that alone.

A sub teacher was in our room for extra help while were "training" him. She saw him choking himself and kinda freaked out. "Um C? What do we do when he does that??!" Me: Nothing, he wants attention and look now he has it so he quit. IGNORE BAD BEHAVIOR.
Now I gotta try and train the other teachers lol.