Oppositional defiant disorder test - do you have it? :P

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Here's a short test I found online for ODD . I took it and says I may have it, I'm 18 though. The test questions will say "does your child", because it's for parents, but when you take it pretend it says "do you"

Click here to take the test

It says I don't have it.

No ODD here although I beleave I was at least looked at for this pre AS Dx

The school system branded me with it because I requested a rational explaination of every school rule unless I wounldnt follow them.

I don't have it.

Also no.

What struck me about the test was that it assumes that the child is wrong to question, argue, or defy adult requests. Sometimes, the child is not wrong. Sometimes when I was a child I refused to do things that I physically or cognitively could not do; I was called rebellious for it. I would question rules because I wanted them to make sense. I desperately wanted rules that were the same all the time, dependable. I even wrote rule sets and proposed them to my parents, and was frustrated because they seemed to enforce rules that were very vague to me and seemed to depend mostly on their moods. Sometimes meltdowns look an awful lot like "manipulative" temper tantrums even though you have completely forgotten anybody is watching you at all.

I have come to believe that I was not a defiant or rebellious child at all--that what happened was that I wanted a dependable environment, but all I had were erratic, capricious parents whose own emotions often overwhelmed them, and who blamed my autistic traits on my supposed bad moral character.

I hope I don't seem to be arrogant to say it, but by the time I was six or seven years old, I was often more sensible than my parents, despite my self-care delays and meltdowns. I have always depended on logic because everything else was too vague for my very concrete mind to use reliably. I remember being six years old and on my first airplane flight. My mother assured me the plane would not crash. I remember thinking to myself that there was a very small chance that it would, but not being afraid because the chance was so small. Even today my mother will stay away from things that have similar levels of danger as a plane crash because of the emotional impact of the idea of that remote possibility. I was using basic statistics at six. My mom still doesn't use them. She thinks with emotions.

From my parents' perspective, I was often described as rebellious and defiant, even though objectively my very worst rule-breakings were things like sneaking chocolate from the cupboard or reading under the covers at night--and even for these things I felt guilty. I was not a rebellious child. The real trouble was that I could not live peacefully in an environment where nothing was dependable or logical. It's really no wonder I escaped into books. I simply knew I could not trust my mother to protect me, or any of her boyfriends or husbands to consider me anything more than an impertinent obstacle to their dominance of the household. So I grew up very quickly. I learned that I could not trust my parents to tell me the truth or keep me safe. I learned that I could not trust them to tell me what right and wrong were, because they were still stuck on the idea that I should simply do whatever they wanted me to. In my house it was my responsibility to make my parents feel like they were being good parents, and this was a responsibility I could not take on. So I was blamed for whatever went wrong in the house. By the time I was ten, I knew that I had to make my own way in the world, that my parents were not people I could depend on. I was emotionally independent long before I left the house. When I did, at seventeen, I was not homesick.

But I was called "defiant", because I could not be the child they wanted to have. I did not know how to pretend they were all-powerful and always right, and I demanded dependability that they could not give. Because I was the child and they were the adults, it was all assumed to be my fault.

I'm with you entirely, Callista. I apparently have ODD, but then I've encountered a fair number of idiots in my time, people who sometimes deserve to be opposed! I prefer to call it Deference Deficiency Disorder.....

I started this test but at 54,, i have grown out of a lot of the defiant behaviors,, if i took this at 20,, yes, i would have it,, but at 54,, Ive mellowed out.

...oh dear, I got this:

Having said that, as both my children are on the spectrum, I am only arguing with them because they are misbehaving, and they both do have signs of ODD! They are the ones who I am always around. I would have got absolutely different answers if I was around adults, e.g. in the workplace etc.

I think it depends on whether you are in an environment with people that argue against you and therefore it pushes you to arguing yourself. I think every parent knows that feeling.

Nicely said Callista.

This test sounds a lot like a joke to me. Certainly there is probably some concern if a child is always doing said things, but if a child is never doing these things I would also be concerned. Maybe I have ODD (lol), but I feel that is it very natural to test boundaries and see what you can or cannot get away with as a child. How else do you learn if you never break any rules? Some of the emotions they say are being expressed here might arise from situations having completely nothing to do with actively breaking rules or trying to be defiant: the rules might just be collateral damage. Personally I think a large component of this test should actually be considering how obsessive the parent, education system, or society is being about having perfect homogenous children. The test assumes that the rules the child must follow are perfect. Sounds like these institutions want perfectly obedient little soldiers. Little Johnny didn’t go to bed when he was supposed to: it couldn’t be that he is not tired, he must have ODD.

On the other hand, I do not know what the ‘treatment’ is for this disorder (literally 'the act of not following commands/instructions' rather than a medical or psychological illness). If a child gets labeled with ODD, does this mean that the doctor prescribes more patience so the child can have a little more freedom when it comes to being defiant?

ABA is used I know.

I've seen a child with ODD. There's a huge difference between him and children who have meltdowns but aren't ODD, even with their normal child pushing on what they can do.

I really do NOT like this quest! I looked at all the questions, and with those questions any opinionated child who doesn't automatically comply would have OCD. That's horrible - it seems more like this test is developed by adults who have Extreme Controlling Disorder!

Yep there is a total difference with a child with ODD and a child without it. You will definitely see it if you met that ODD child and were around them enough. They are not good people, they are manipulative, can wear this mask and be charming kids and then take it off when they want and be a bully and they act like sociopaths. I knew a kid with it and he was not a good person. He was also a pathological liar and abused his mother to get his way and he also bullied other kids at school and took pride in hurting disabled children. And ODD is fake? I don't see very many children who are like this. Only ODD kids whenever I hear about the condition. Always manipulative, always violent, always manipulative, always a bully and likes hurting people and doesn't care. I still need to hear about a ODD kid that doesn't disrespect people and doesn't bully anyone and isn't manipulative and doesn't wear a charming mask.

Oh yeah this kid also kept throwing an ax at my brothers and their friends. His parents hospitalized him for it when my parents told them what he did.

Last edited by League_Girl on 03 Mar 2013, 4:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The ODD kid I know isn't a bully. He might become one, but he's doing well with his treatment (I don't know what there is other than ABA at school).

The best treatment for true ODD, in my opinion, is to teach the parents how to be very consistent, reliable, dependable, how to stay calm instead of yelling back at the child, and to involve the child in the actual rule-making, so that he understands why the rules are there, and to have known penalties that are the same all the time. The best thing to do seems to be to actually teach the child how to control himself, rather than teaching him how to submit to his parents, and to teach him that the parents can be trusted to make rules that will keep him safe, healthy, and happy.

I don't know if this is considered to be unusually permissive, but it does have the benefit of being harmless even if applied to a non-ODD child, probably even beneficial. When a kid like me, who desperately wants structure, is in an environment like my childhood home, where nothing could be depended on, that child will be much happier knowing what the rules are and why they are there, and having them consistently enforced. Even a child who didn't have a defiant bone in their body would be happier with that.

My results said that I might be experiencing ODD, but then again, I'm not a child, I'm 21, and after such a long time, I've got every reason to be good and tired of society's BS, and to start rebelling a little and doing things MY way for a change.