Hi:
My name is Al and I have been having some problems with my son lately. A friend of my wife suggested he may have ODD. We’re hoping to get into a psychiatrist in the next few weeks. In the mean time I thought I’d describe his behaviour and see if any of you living with this disorder recognize any symptoms.
First of all, all through school he has taken the path of least resistance. He has avoided work at almost all cost, lying, throwing assignments away, etc. It started in kindergarten when his teacher told us “he doesn’t do the work but he’s such a bright boy I know he can”. He gets along very well with adults, not so well with other kids. Every time he gets into a new class, he makes sucha good impression on the teacher that they just let the homework slide. Once they get wise to him (usually after about six months) they get on top of him and work with him to make sure he is submitting work.
The latest troubles started about six weeks ago. We’ve moved to a knew town to get out of the city. My son was in favour of the move, he really likes it here. We moved to the town where we have our summer place. In any event, we’d been hearing about how well he was doing in school. This was a relief because at the last reporting period we’d seen signs that he wasn’t doing his work and was falling into his pattern of lying, work avoidance, and falling behind. We spoke with his teachers (he is 13 and in grade 8) and indicated that this fit with past behaviour and that they needed to keep on top of this and let us know if he was not getting assignments done or doing poorly on exams.
Anyway, we thought he was doing pretty well and then my wife went in to student led conference in mid-February (I was away at a family funeral). Well it turns out that he was getting VERY poor marks, several assignments had not been done and he was in jeopardy of failing. My wife started asking questions of him and he started getting angry replying with comments like “you’re not going to push me down further” and “silence, we’re not talking about that now”. So much for student lead conferences!
Well, my wife found out exactly where the short falls were and together they set up a schedule for him to get caught up. In the mean time his access to his computer was taken away, as were TV privileges and his access to the ATV.
He was showing signs of getting caught up when he had a bit of a slip and got 30% on an open book exam. His teacher gave everyone who did poorly a chance to re-do the exam, but he chose not to (and again we were not told). We got his report card last week and he seems to be picking things up a bit, he got an overall 70%. respectable, but certainly not up to his potential.
We were fairly happy with the progress he was making when the bottom dropped out of our world. My daughter (6) had two friends over on Thursday (last day of school before Easter break) and the three of them, along with my four year old daughter, went to the park with my son acting as baby sitter.
My wife was taking care of the kids since I was out of town on business. I got home about 5:00 and piled the girls into my truck to take them home. By the time I returned home, my wife had received a phone call from one of the girls moms saying that my son had exposed himself to the girls. We checked into it and the story was confirmed that while playing, my son suggested that they play “truth or dare”. As part of the game he was dared to drop his pants, which he did.
We were stunned. We contacted the parrents (one of whom is my sons teacher!), talked to our girls, determined that there had been no touching, discussed the seriousness of this with him, etc. After some discussion it came out that this was the second incident, that it had happened in the fall with another of my daughters friends. I called that girls parents and explained the situation. Not knowing what else to do, I contacted the local police and reported it. I knew that if my six year old daughter were abused this way by another 13 year old boy, it would not be sufficient for the family to be handling it themselves. The police would need to be involved to make sure that no further damage was done.
After a hellacious evening, I became concerned about his mental state so I called a local mental health hot line. They suggested we take him to emergency and get him assessed for depression. I took him to the nearest city emergency room where we were whisked right in (which is unusual) and the emerg doctor got hold of a psychiatrist who spoke to me and told me that my son needed to be seen “urgently”.
So, we came back home and tried to settle the family down. My wife was beside herself, she cried all night. Our anxiety was increased because we just moved on Thursday and we have furniture everywhere. We went for lunch and to a movie on Good Friday to try and take our minds off things and get some normalcy back into our lives.
I got a call from the police on Friday evening and the officer told me she would follow up with the other girls parents to see how they felt we’d handled everything. Her opinion was that we’d probably done everything we needed to and it would all just go away and we could seek treatment for our son. I was relieved.
Last night I got a call from the police officer and she told me that I hadn’t received the whole story. After my 13 year old son dropped his pants, he had dared the girls (three 6 year olds and a 4 year old) to drop their pants. Two of them did (my six year old and one of her friends). Well I couldn’t believe it. He’d lied to us again by not telling us all of the truth. And he’d told the girls not to tell what they’d done. My daughter hadn’t told us for fear of getting into trouble.
I have many concerns, chief of which is that he’s subtley teaching my daughters that they need to hide other peoples inappropriate behaviour from her parents. The second of which is that I don’t know what he’s capable of. He knows that this was wrong and he did it anyway, then he tried to cover it up. And when he was caught with irrefutable proof, he still hid some of what he did.
In honesty, I don’t know if I can have him in my house anymore. I feel like I have a very sneaky, manipulative person with no conscience living with me. I fear for my children.
So, my question is twofold. Am I over reacting? Is this normal 13 year old behaviour? I wouldn’t be as concerned if my daughter was eleven and he’d tried playing this with her elevel yearold friends. But these are really little girls. My other question is this, does this sound like ODD. We are at our whits end. We need help.