Growing Great Families – He Just Doesn’t Listen: Is there something wrong with him or could it be us?

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Countless articles on parenting and TV reality shows like “Super Nanny” highlight issues about kids out of control or who rarely listen to their parents. Even early childhood educators report increasing violent or anti-social behavior among their students. Are we experiencing and epidemic on what is labeled by the mental health community as Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)? This show will examine the apparent increase in negative behaviors among children and offer explanations as to what is happening and what parents can do about it. You will learn about a cluster of factors that might explain the increase in defiant behavior among children – starting with TV violence.

A March, 2011, report by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry indicated that American children watch an average of four hours of television daily. Unfortunately, much of today’s television programming is violent. The consequences for kids are that they become numb to the horror of violence, and they tend to imitate the violence they observe on the screen.

In addition, we explore how both neglectful and over parenting also contributes to oppositional behaviors and how ADHD, when not properly treated, often starts a progression of impulsive behaviors that lead to full scale Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Parents coping with the defiant child need to learn new strategies and techniques for disciplining their child. Learning how to curb misbehaviors without saying “no” and learning to control emotions when disciplining a child are crucial steps for parents to take. Following the Family Centered Parenting model, parents will learn how to discipline in a way that helps the oppositional child without engaging in the power struggle that actually feeds out of control behaviors. Our show concludes with a question from our audience that speaks to parenting approaches by a mom and a dad that are polar opposites and allows the oppositional child to inhabit the powerful role as being the center of attention.