This article is about you – the parent. Many parents of ODD, ADHD, or otherwise difficult defiant children and/or teens, feel very ineffective as parents.

I want to dispel some of the bad feelings that you might be having now. There is one thing that is critical for you to understand – no child comes to this world completely blank.

Children come with certain personality traits, tendencies, and inherent natures. These, in a large part, affect the way they behave and develop. Some children are easy to raise and some are difficult to raise. This has nothing to do with your skills as a parent or your concern as a parent.

Another fact that you must understand is that it is difficult to raise children who have oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), ADHD, other behavioral problems, or difficult natures. It is just hard to raise them.

You might be getting a lot of negative feedback from your peers, other parenting groups, or even teachers about what is happening with your child. You may feel that they make you feel like you are a bad parent. Some children are just difficult to raise and it has nothing to do with you as a parent.

For example, a child who is a very easy, good natured child to raise may have parents who are relatively ineffective as parents, and the child will turn out alright anyway. However, even if you are a superb parent and you have a child who is difficult, defiant, oppositional, ADHD, bipolar, or any other behavioral/psychological problems, your child can be hard to raise.

You will be doing a very good job and the results will be that the child will not always be the best behaved child. I will give you an example of this.

We had our children evaluated in school as they were getting older. I remember talking to the psychologist who was doing the evaluating of our third child. He evaluated our first child and determined he was an oppositional defiant child and had ADHD. Our second child, who was more the ADD type child, was also becoming oppositional.

Later on the psychologist evaluated our third child and told us at the time, “This child is much easier isn’t he?” And he was. He still is – the third child we have is a very common, relaxed, well behaved child who gets along with everybody, and it has nothing to do with me or my wife. He is just an easy child to raise.

This does not mean you have an excuse not to do a good job with your child. If you have an oppositional defiant disorder child, a difficult child, or a child with other problems, it is your job as a parent to raise them and do what you can to raise them properly.

To do this, you must develop your parenting skills. I would encourage you to do this because once you know how to handle these children, they won’t be easy to raise, but you will be a much more effective parent.

The most important thing you can do is get involved in a parent training program. I want to stress a few things about these programs.

Studies have shown that a good parenting home study program is just as effective as going to a psychologist to help parents raise their children better. That means you do not have to spend one or two hundred dollars a week or several thousand dollars learning how to raise your child from a psychology professional.

You can get a home study at a fairly inexpensive rate and learn how to raise your child just as effectively that way.

The programs that you must avoid at all costs have the following aspects: the focus is upon discipline and punishment and these programs group all children together from age 2 to whatever. You must avoid these programs at all costs. Discipline is only effective to get short term goals, which is why parents like these programs.

When you use punishment, you are affecting your long term relationship with your child. It is going to be very negative. As your child gets older, he will start to rebel. These programs that you learn require you to keep increasing the punishment level. Eventually your child is going to get up and walk out your front door, and you will lose your relationship with your child.

What you want to do is get a program that focuses upon the age category of your child – these categories are from 2-11 and 12 throughout the teenage years. They focus on the different stages of development. Put your focus on a program that stresses on each group individually and works on the parent child relationship to affect better behavior in your child.