An ODD Diagnosis
by Teri Ong
In couple more years I will be renewing my Colorado Teacher’s License for the seventh time. I will have been a duly credentialed teacher of elementary age children for thirty years. In that time I have seen “classroom management” fads come and go. But this one thing I know; nothing good will happen in a classroom of any kind if the teacher is not in control. Sadly, the current fad is to excuse children from personal responsibility for bad behavior on the basis of an alphabet soup of psychological “disorders.” Teachers cannot control a certain percentage of troubled students, and the troubled students cannot control themselves. Disorder prevails because “disorders” reign supreme.
It doesn’t matter if you are a classroom teacher or a Sunday school worker, you have undoubtedly heard the worst kinds of behavior excused by an indulgent parent on the basis of ADD, ADHD, EBD, OCD, ETC, ETC, ETC. The miscreant child supposedly cannot be held responsible for unrestrained temper tantrums, disruptive activity, bad language, acts of violence toward others, and so forth, because of these disabling conditions. The strangest “disability” I have encountered, however, is one a homeschool mother (of all people!) ascribed to her messed-up child during an unsatisfactory academic evaluation – ODD– “Oppositional Defiant Disorder.”
I thought it was very “odd” indeed! The child had supposedly been ruined by an oppressive school experience, but it seemed more likely to me that he had been ruined first of all by an overly indulgent home experience. The child responded to me fairly well and did most of the work tasks I asked him to do. I had to do some gentle coaxing on tasks that the child didn’t like to do, but on the whole, we got along pretty well. But as soon as the mother started trying to do her own coaxing, the child set his jaw and glared the proverbial daggers at her.
My initial reaction was NOT, “Oh, this poor little thing! What sort of educational abuse he must have endured to become such a walking disaster area!” My first reaction was, “What a little monster! This child needs meaningful Biblical discipline!” My second reaction was, “This mother has abused her child by indulging his tantrums and teaching him how to be psychologically manipulative. If she doesn’t teach him self-government through development of good character, he will be an early candidate for jail or suicide or both.”
That was last April. Then in November I had another ODD encounter with two elementary-age brothers who threatened, attacked, bullied, and bit several of the Sunday school workers in our church. This mother likewise excused their acts of violence because they have been diagnosed with “oppositional defiant disorder.”
Let’s for one moment assume that there truly is such a disabling condition of the brain.
There are people who struggle with other sorts of physical disabilities. Some people are born with impaired mental capacity. Some people lose limbs in accidents or because of disease. Some people have disfiguring cleft palates that make it difficult or impossible to eat or speak properly. Often times, however, the people we admire the most are those who have overcome the greatest disabilities.
We admire the paraplegic who competes in wheelchair basketball. We admire the quadriplegic who creates artworks with a pencil or paintbrush in her teeth. We admire the musician born without arms who plays guitar with his feet. We admire the man without any limbs at all who becomes a world famous motivational speaker. We admire the childhood cancer survivors, the “heart babies” who make it to productive adulthood. My point is that we have great respect for those whose handicaps were a motivation for achievement rather than an excuse for bad behavior.
If there indeed is such a condition as ODD, parents should teach their children to achieve greatness by persevering to overcome it. What would it take for parents to do this? It would take great perseverance and character on the part of the parents to help their children. But sadly, many children will never learn to be anything but oppositional and defiant because they live with a parent or parents who have LAME disorder– “Lazy And Making Excuses.”
I believe we are in for an epidemic of ODD. The Apostle Paul predicted it in 2 Timothy 3:1-4:
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…
I propose a new name for all of the “disorders” Paul identified– “Defiant Evil Syndrome.” It could be shortened to D-EVIL-S. It is, after all, related to the genetic problem known as “the sin nature” that resulted from the devil’s own opposition to and defiance of God.
The Apostle Paul, who warned us about the problem in the first place, also wrote about the solution. The solution is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the one who can cure D-EVIL-S. Ephesians 4:23-27 says:
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. 25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. 26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: 27 Neither give place to the devil.
Psalm One (from the Evangelical Psalter)
I once despised and scorned the name
Of my Creator God,
Believing every boastful claim
Of those who spurn His Word.
I walked in bondage to the ways
Of this lost world below,
And spent my strength and passing days
In selfishness and show.
Now in His Word my soul has found
All knowledge, truth, and light;
Diffusing all my wondering mind
With unsurpassed delight.
Secure in Christ, He keeps me by
A living stream of grace,
And turns the sorest trial or sigh
To fruitfulness and peace.
Without His pardoning love would I
No place in heaven find,
But be condemned, at death, to fly
As chaff before the wind.
I’ll trust His never-failing love
Who knows and keeps His own;
He guards my way to realms above
And watches from His throne.
