Post-Permanency Newsletter

This year’s “Back-To-School” will be unique and different than any other in our lifetime.  With the Pandemic waning and vaccines available in the United States, most children will return to in-person school in the Fall. It will not just be about the trip to Target to get notebooks and backpacks and pencils and pens. It will not only be about a trip to the mall to obtain the perfect first day of school outfit.  As parents we are faced with the tricky task of emotionally guiding and leading our families back to school after months upon months of isolation.

If your child has been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Dr. Ross Greene must be your guru. He is the author of The Explosive Child. Isn’t the word defiant already 100 times better then the word oppositional? That is just a glimpse at his magic. Even if your chid doesn’t carry an ODD diagnoses, I urge you to purchase, read, and then practice his program outlined in his book. Greene’s website, Lives in Balance, will also guide you on your parenting journey whether your child is ornery, grumpy, non-compliant, angry, argumentative, prickly, hard to get along with, or even has an ODD diagnoses. And no, I do not know Dr. Greene, and he didn’t pay me to write this. 

We adopted our 8-year-old son when he was 2, knowing he had a rough past full of neglect. But we never could have imagined he would be so hard to get along with and even more difficult to parent. He is our 4th
son so we are seasoned parents but nothing we do seems to work. He fights both me and his dad on every request we make of him. Almost worse then that, he is constantly bickering with, picking fights with, and all out annoying his 3 brothers. He was just diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. What is going on?

In an effort to help parents understand their differently wired kids, we are going to tackle common labels these kids earn. By examining their meanings, we learn strategies to support such kids.
Today we start with Oppositional Defiant Disorder