The Whole Parent Podcast
The Whole Parent Podcast
What If ODD Is A Cry For Autonomy... #75
In this episode, Jon speaks directly to parents worn down by constant power struggles—especially those navigating an ODD or PDA diagnosis—starting with the raw truth that holding the line often makes everything explode. Instead of doubling down on consistency or control, he reframes defiance as a nervous system response to perceived threat, not a character problem or a parenting failure. Listeners will walk away with relief, language for what’s really happening in these moments, and a steadier way to hold boundaries without becoming the enemy—grounded in safety, flexibility, and the radical idea that a child’s push for autonomy is not something to extinguish, but something to work with.
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The door is locked from the inside. A small, furious voice screams on the other side, fast and breathless. He'll be hoarse soon. You slide down the hallway, wall, and sit on the floor. A picture frame rattles as something heavy hits the other side of the door. You'll be removing the lock before the day is over. But for now, all you can do is wait it out. If you're listening to this and your child has been diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder, or maybe you have suspicions, you're wondering how every single interaction turns into a standoff. Why the tools that everyone recommends seem to make things worse. Why holding boundaries feel like lighting a fuse and backing off feels like giving up. This episode is for parents who are exhausted by power struggles and confused by advice that doesn't work. We're going to talk about how to step out of the role of the enemy without losing your authority, and how to parent a child who experiences limits as threats, not guidance. By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with a new way to respond in the moment when your child pushes back, and what to say before setting a limit so that it doesn't escalate. There are a couple of shifts that you can make at home that can reduce the explosions without giving up the structure or expectations, and specific language that you can use that lowers defensiveness instead of feeding into the power struggle. If you've ever thought I'm doing everything that they say and I'm still falling apart, this episode is here to help you make sense of that and show you a different way forward. Let's get into it. Some awesome new things for a new book that I'm going to be pitching very soon. Like probably by the time that you listen to this episode, it will be out for publishers to go and look at. And so I've been sitting at a desk all day, but I still wanted to make this episode because I got a question only a couple of days ago. It's my second question today. And I really wanted to answer it because I could hear kind of the pain underneath it. And so I want to jump into ODD. The first thing that I want to say is that I am not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't diagnose anybody with anything. What I do is I take the research, whatever is out there, and I try and synthesize it in the best possible way so that I can give advice to people who either have those diagnoses or their children have those diagnoses, or who might think that their children have those diagnosed diagnoses, but they aren't there yet. If you listen to this episode and it makes you think, oh, now I should start, you know, self-diagnosing my child with ODD or PDA, which is pathological demand avoidance, which can is is different, but often can they're kind of used interchangeably colloquially. Uh I don't recommend you do that. I think that this is uh an important diagnosis to have if it's important to your healthcare provider, but I don't necessarily know how helpful it is for parents all the time. And that's kind of where our first question gets into, gets into. And so uh I don't have a kid who's been diagnosed with ODD. I'm just giving you what the best available research tells me and also uh is offering to parents of ODD kids. And I will say, uh, as we talk this through and as we go through this, most of the advice that I give in this episode is really for all parents. It's for parents of kids who struggle with defiant behavior just because they're a toddler. It's for parents who struggle with kids who have defiant behavior because they're teenagers. It's advice that I would give to anybody who's struggling with a child who's getting into power struggles with them. And different kids go through different seasons where they do this. The kids who are diagnosed with PDA or ODD, generatively speaking, have a consistent basis for this, where this is happening over a long period of time. It's not just a couple, it's not just a season, it is a it's a long haul thing. And we'll kind of explore why that is today, but just understand that basically everything that I'm giving as far as advice today is applicable to all kids who struggle with defiance, which by the way, is all kids. If you have a kid who is never ever defiant, then that's actually more troubling to me than if you have a kid who's intermittently defiant or even defiant more than intermittently. And that's because it tells me that your child doesn't feel safe. If they are never pushing back on boundaries, if they're never escalating things, if they're never exploding or snapping on you, that's not necessarily a good thing. That that tells me that there's something else going on there. And so without further ado, let's jump into the first question from Elizabeth. It was an email and she says, My son is eight, and we officially got an ODD diagnosis last month. I thought that I would feel relieved. Like, okay, great, now we know what's going on. But instead, I feel more stuck than ever because every article is like, be consistent, follow through, don't give in. And I'm like, that's literally when things explode the most. If I hold the line, he escalates until neighbors can hear. If I back off, I feel like I'm reinforcing it, and now everything feels loaded. Like every interaction is a test, and I'm failing. What am I supposed to do? Elizabeth, this is the first question that I'm answering today because I feel like it it sets us off on the right foot. And that is to say that most of the advice that people give kids who are or parents of kids who struggle with taking orders or listening to commands or complying or obeying or any of the ways in which we've said this in the past, most of the advice comes from traditional behaviorism and it doesn't work. And the reason why it doesn't work, it doesn't really work for any kids. I'll get into that in a second. But the reason that it specifically doesn't work for ODD kids or kids who are typically diagnosed with ODD is because they experience any sort of limits and boundaries as danger. They see it as a threat to their autonomy, a threat to their agency, and not as, you know, guidance to keep them safe. And so you have to enforce boundaries in a very specific way. I'm not saying that you shouldn't enforce boundaries, you absolutely should. Boundaries are important, especially where they are around safety and things like that. But there is a kind of a secret trick that I'm gonna teach you on how to do that. The first thing I want to give you though, before that, is to say that at the same time as you need to be able to enforce boundaries, you also kids with ODD, but just kids in general, right? Like I I keep, I'm gonna say kids with ODD a million times in this episode. And what I really mean is all kids, right? All kids have a biological drive and need for autonomy and agency. All kids experience this need greater as they get older. They don't have this drive at all when they're 18. Uh, they start to get it when they're two or three, and if that goes unmet, or if they feel like it's going unmet as they are growing and it doesn't expand as they're growing, then they feel that lack of agency and they will respond to it. Some kids respond to it by kind of hiding and manipulating the situation. And by that I mean like a kid who feels like they want to ride their bike without a helmet, like my brothers did. They've told me that they used to do this. They wanted to ride their bikes without helmets, and my mom being a nurse and and seeing lots of traumatic brain injuries. And by the way, I feel the same way as my mom. I don't let my kids ride bikes without a helmet either. So good on you, mom. Thanks for that. But when she told them they have to ride their bikes with a helmet, they would drive, ride to school, they would ditch their helmets underneath the bushes, a block away from our house, ride to school, and then when they got back from school, they would pick it up on their way home. So essentially they weren't doing what she said, they were violating that boundary. She was ineffectively holding that boundary. I don't know exactly what I would have wanted her to do differently, but for whatever reason, they were not listening to that, but they were not doing so overtly. They weren't directly challenging her authority, they weren't directly um misbehaving in front of her, they were just kind of going around the rule because they felt that they could get away with it. And probably, you know, it has to do, my guess is that the the reason for the rule might not have been super clear to them, or maybe they were just trying to do this to avoid the punishment or whatever. But that is one way that many kids get around limits that they feel are impractical for them or that they don't want to follow, or boundaries, is that they just do that outside the purview of the parent. The thing with an ODD kid is that they just feel safe enough, or perhaps they don't aren't emotionally regulated enough that they will try and manipulate a situation. They'll just come right against you and they'll and they'll lose it. And so the first thing that I want to say is that boundaries are important, but also autonomy is important. You have to give them age-appropriate autonomy. Otherwise, they are just constantly going to be pushing back on you with everything. So really, I would view this more in the realm of like how do we hold boundaries, not do we hold boundaries? And when is it what when do we not need to hold boundaries, right? When do we when can we create an environment where they can feel like they have autonomy and and agency and all of those things? Because if they don't feel that way, then it's gonna be really hard to hold the boundaries when it's time to, because as you said, every single interaction feels loaded. It feels like you've lit this fuse every single time you put your foot down, or not even put your foot down, like that's a the a bad way to say it. Every single time that you push back, you feel like you're letting this fuse and like it's just gonna go off like a bomb. And you're just like tiptoeing, like it's like it's like being, you know, walking around a minefield constantly, like you're tiptoeing around, trying not to set your kid off. But you know, every boundary is going to set them off. And so, like the advice that you just double down and you just kind of go be tougher and be more consistent and follow through and never give in, like, actually that is the worst possible advice in in many respects, because like what your child needs is flexibility because they lack flexibility. So your child's lacking flexibility, they need you to be extra flexible and learn and be able to adapt and go with the flow and improvise in the moment to be able to say, okay, this is probably not a boundary that we absolutely need to hold. This is a boundary that we absolutely need to hold. And people think that an ODD kid, like if you give them an inch, then they're gonna take a mile. This is old school behaviorism. That is not accurate, that is not how kids function. It is how some adults function who are, you know, kind of toxic mental frameworks where they're, you know, doing things like grooming, right? Grooming is like the perfect example of this, where if you have an adult who's trying to um get into a toxic relationship with another adult, they might start by doing kind of individual bad things, but they're really just trying to get their claws in and grit get their hooks in so that they can they can do worse and worse and worse things. Kids don't do this, like kids don't operate that way, they're not thinking in those terms. And so anytime that you can give your ODD kid freedom, the better because they see those limits and those boundaries as danger. And so you're kind of building up emotional deposits. Now, that said, when you have to be consistent, when you have to hold the boundary, I think that there's a a really clear way to do that. And it comes with understanding why they're being explosive and why they're being set off. So, as I said before, ODD kids are experiencing limits, they're experiencing boundaries as a threat to their survival. In some ways, it's because whatever part of them has developed in this way. And often we talk about this as being like developmentally delayed in emotional regulation or develop developmentally delayed in their ability to uh like handle conflict or or to like have frustration tolerance. They're like delayed in their frustration tolerance. Like, I don't want to scare you off more by saying, oh, now your kid's developmentally delayed, you know, on top of being ODD. No, it's just it's just a more, I think it's a more generous way of putting like in like they're not, they don't have a disorder where they're oppositional. They're just they just have underdeveloped sense of frustration tolerance, or they have an underdeveloped sense of emotional regulation. I think that's that to me that feels better. Maybe it doesn't feel better to you, but um, so don't hear me saying, like, you know, oh well, it's this on top of that. It's it's just a different way of viewing it. And this is the way that Dr. Ross Green does. And by the way, I should have plugged that at the beginning. Most of the stuff that I'm gonna say today uh comes from Ross Green, who wrote a book called The Explosive Child, which is like my top five parent favorite parenting books of all time, and is very, very good for kids, parents of kids who are ODD, PDA. And he doesn't even use the those diagnoses. So he it's interesting, he talks in the book about how there's if you if you do OD, if you have the ODD diagnosis and it doesn't, you're not the kid doesn't get better, you don't find good solutions, then they slap a PDA diagnosis. And if that doesn't help, if the new protocols for that don't help, then they slap like a Tourette's diagnosis on them, or they slap like an ADHD diagnosis, or they slap an ASD diagnosis, and they just keep diagnosing and diagnosing, trying to get at this underlying thing, which Ross points out, Dr. Ross Green points out, is really an underdeveloped sense of emotional regulation and frustration tolerance. So, with that being the case, understand that what they're experiencing is danger. I think it's if you come right out before enforcing the boundary and you insert a safety cue of saying, hey, you're not in trouble. I'm not mad at you, I'm not trying to control you. Here's the rule. I'm right here with you through that rule. It gets a lot easier to hold that boundary because what kids are often reacting to in those, in that moment of dysregulation is like this, well, you can't make me, and then they immediately feel this kind of shame spiral because they've been taught, no, you know, you need to listen, or this, or that, or the other, you're gonna get in trouble. And they start to spiral. So that's kind of what happens, like it in a way, like they're working themselves up because they feel like they're gonna be more in trouble, or you're gonna be more mad at them, or like they just want to do this, and like you're not letting them, and and now you're gonna be mad, and now I'm mad, and and it just kind of the the essentially the they get like a feedback loop of frustration that just explodes outward. So instead, if you can just take that same energy and go, hey, look, you're not in trouble. I'm not trying to get on you here, I'm not trying to control you, I'm not mad at you. And here's the rule, it can diffuse some of that. Am I saying that immediately they're gonna just like comply with the rule, or they're just immediately gonna like go with you and say, oh yeah, no, of course, that that's exactly you're so right, mom. I'm gonna like go with you. No, like they still are going to see that as emotionally dysregulating. They're still likely going to, you know, run into their frustration limit and start snapping. But I think that that one of the key pieces here is to insist with yourself on safety. And this is why uh punishment free parenting, which is my book, is increasingly used with kids who have ODD and other diagnoses that are similar that result in explosive behaviors. Because punishment free parenting is based entirely on the concept that you should never make your kid feel like they're getting into trouble. Not because, like, I'm some sort of softy, you know, I don't want any kid to feel bad ever. No, but by all means, kids, kids, when they do something wrong and they suffer the consequences of that, like they that's fine if they feel bad about that. If a kid hurts another kid and they feel bad about that, that's good. That means that their brain is working correctly, right? And it doesn't mean that if they do that and they don't get upset, uh, that they hurt somebody else, that their brain is working incorrectly. Don't hear me say that either. I should I should I should be more careful with how I speak. But um, the reason that the book is being used more and more is is partially because what we know is exactly what I'm saying here, which is if you if you don't pile on a kid, if you don't throw punishments at a kid to try and control their behavior, if you don't, you know, make them feel like total garbage, then actually they're they kind of have a more capacity to even listen and follow through with you. So I would say like the advice be consistent, follow through, don't give in. Like, I think that that's I don't want to say it's the opposite of what you should do because being consistent is good. Following through is good. Uh, not giving in, I don't know what that exactly means. I'm assuming that that means like, like, don't let your kid win, you should always win. I think that that type of win-lose thinking is like really problematic in parenting in general. So I would say no matter what your kid is, you should not be thinking about giving in or not. I'm not saying that those are bad things. I'm saying that the mindset that begins from like it's a you problem, not a it's a skill deficit in them. And here's how you can come alongside and support that skill deficit would be flawed. And so I guess that's that's the last thing I'll say before I jump to the next question is, you know, as you're viewing working with your ODD kid, just accept. You know, one of the things that that in the medical field they talk about with ODD diagnosis is this concept of radical acceptance. I think every kid deserves radical acceptance. Like, let me just say that for the record. Like, I think every kid deserves radical acceptance. But especially a kid with ODD, they they they need radical acceptance because if you don't radically accept that this is their struggle and that this is their like growing edge, that you are going to come along and support in the same way that if they were like delayed in their reading, you would come along and support them in that too. If they were delayed in their language development, you would come along and support them in that. If they were delayed in their motor skill development, you would come along and support them in that. Just because this is an emotional delay, or this is a delay in frustration tolerance, now all of a sudden we have cast it with like moral judgment. Like, oh, well, this kid's like there's something wrong with them, they're bad, or they're just giving you a hard time, or like there's something, you know, whatever. I think that's a huge mistake. View it for what it is, which is this is a developmental struggle and I need to support them, which begins with accepting that they have that struggle and then be becoming flexible because really what they're struggling with is a is a lack of flexibility. When things when when there's any sort of limit and they don't like it, they just experience this profound like inability to move off of that, and they just get into this feedback loop and and spike. So safety cues with the boundaries, you're not in trouble, I'm not mad. That goes a huge long way. And that comes, I think the only way that you can say that with integrity and say that consistently is by actually believing that that you're not trying to get your kid in trouble because they because they're pushing back. You're not mad at your kid because they're pushing back. You see that for what it is. Okay, take a break. Let me go to the second question. The second question comes from Tammy. It was another email, and it says, I had suspicions that my four and a half-year-old Audi HD son, so for those who don't know, Audi HD is ADHD and autism, it's like a shared diagnosis now, might also have oppositional defiance disorder. I had mentioned my suspicions to his doctor a little over a year ago, and we both agree that it was hard to determine if he was ODD or just behaving like a toddler. He is consistently getting into things that he's been told not. Not to touch, and unfortunately, sometimes things break. Really expensive things, like his father loses his mind and there's a meltdown all around. I swear his father has a bigger 10 per tantrums than our son most of the time. Or he will torture our dogs and get in their face. And no matter how many times I tell him, don't do that, that's not nice. The dogs don't like that. And one of them these times the dogs are going to bite you. We have three dogs and they've all given him warning growls and twice they've nipped him. He still doesn't get it. When he's playing with things he shouldn't feel, when he's playing with things he shouldn't, I feel like the permissive parent you just mentioned in the workshop. I know my kiddo just can't help himself and does his best to be gentle with things, model trains, etc., he's insisting on playing with. Do you have any tips for how I can support him and get him to follow the rules of not being able to touch and play with X, Y, and Z because it's against the rules or because the dogs don't like that. You know, this is such a like invested question, Tammy. And I really appreciate you sending this as an email. Um, I'm assuming that when you mean he's torturing the dogs, he's not actually torturing the dogs, he's just like bothering them and annoying them. But uh, because if he's actually torturing your pets, like I would say, well, that that's like that's a thing that I would definitely seek immediate help for uh from a child psychologist beyond just your normal pediatrician, um, because that that just speaks to you know other things going on. But lots of kids annoy dogs, lots of kids annoy their siblings because it's stimulating. And I think that when you say I have an Audi HD kid, and they also have this oppositional defiant tendency, my first instinct is to say, okay, well, let's just talk about how to parent ADHD kids and kids with ASD. And usually when it's an Audi HD diagnosis, you're gonna wind up with a PDA diagnosis anyway, rather than an ODD diagnosis. ODD is kind of like what we throw at kids when we can't find anything else to throw at them. So usually it starts with with, especially if you already have an ASD diagnosis, you're gonna get a PDA diagnosis before you get an ODD diagnosis. But it's neither here nor there because most of much of the advice is going to be the same. So the first thing that I would say is let's just take the ODD and separate it out and say one of the key things with parenting neurodivergent kids, uh ASD ADHD, is impulse control. Like these kids really, really struggle with impulse control. And so in that case, I wouldn't even say like we're being oppositional. I would say we're being impulsive. And a kid who is being told, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, oftentimes will still do it. And it's not because they're disobeying you or they're being oppositional, like they're like pushing a boundary or something like that. It's because they literally just see that thing and then impulsively they kind of grab it. It's like the inside thoughts that we all have of like, oh, I wonder what would happen if I just like threw this on the floor right now. Well, the kids who have ADHD, ASD, they will often have those kind of interior type thoughts of like, oh, I wonder what will happen. That would be really stimulating to find out. And then they do it for the stimulation. And so the first thing that I would say is when you feel permissive with an ADHD kid or an ASD kid, I I would reframe that and say, if what you're telling me is that you're underreacting to things, if what you're telling me is you just give in so that you can like not have to deal with the emotions that come with it. First and foremost, um, choosing your battles is an important part of parenting, especially neurodivergent kids, especially if you do get that ODD diagnosis, if you do get that PDA diagnosis, they're gonna tell you, choose your battles. And like this is one place where we're gonna choose our battles, okay? So, like, just because you feel like I got to choose my battles, like sometimes you gotta choose your battles, that's okay. We're gonna talk about that here in a moment. But if what you mean by permissive is just that you're underreacting to him breaking stuff or him like messing with the dogs or whatever, that's actually not a terrible thing. Because oftentimes the reason that kids do those things when they but they're they're neurodivergent or just like they're young and they're sensory-seeking is because they're neurologically stimulating, right? So like bugging the dog and the dog getting increasingly bothered and growling is like a kind of a scary uh like sensory experience. And so it can be like, oh, I kind of turn my brain off and I kind of go offline and I it kind of impulsively do this thing of like poking the dog in the face, and then the dog eventually is like, and then it's like, whoa, I got that sensory feedback, and then like that feels that feels stimulating. And I'm not saying it feels good, but it feels stimulating, and stimulation is one thing, like when your nervous system is stimulated, then like you're just like it builds that neural pathway of like, oh, I could do that again, and I like find out if that happens again. And so part of underreacting, and like that's being a positive thing, is like the more boring that you make something, the less likely your kid is to do it again. Like, and I don't mean that in like a hurtful way, but just like the more boring something is, like the more your kid is gonna be like, oh, that's not that's not fun to do. So a great example of this with like a model train would be okay, so the kid wants to play with the model train, he's like, wants to, you know, play, play, play, play with the model train. Okay, you can say, okay, we can't play with the model train, but we can hold it. This is a holding toy, it's not a playing toy. Okay, so you put your hands out. I'm holding my hands out on camera right now, but you put your hands out, and then I'm gonna put it in your hands, and we're gonna count to five. One, two, three, four, five. Okay, you held it. That's how we play with this. And you're like giving him an alternative behavior that you're looking for, right? One a big piece with this, right? Of ODD, but also neurodivergent kids, but also just four and a half year olds. Like, like a big piece with this in general is we always have to find a replacement behavior. If we're trying to tell our kid not to do something, like that is just such a difficult thing to do. It's such a difficult mental concept, like don't do this. Okay, well, then what am I supposed to do instead? Stand here with my hands in my pockets? No, like when you say don't play with that, you're obviously saying, like in your mind, you're saying, like, oh, go play with it something else somewhere else. Well, that's an alternative behavior. If you just started with, hey, what let's go play with Legos instead of let's not play with this train or let's not play with this thing, then like you would you would be much more successful because then it's not like you're telling him no, you're telling him you're redirecting. And that's just much more positive. And over time, you can build up that frustration tolerance. But at four and a half, I'm not even trying to do that with it with an Audi HD kit. I'm not even trying to build up frustration tolerance over like delicate things at this point. Like if I were gonna build frustration tolerance, that's gonna be done in in microwaves, right? So if he's insisting on touching something he's not really supposed to touch, okay, here are the conditions under which you can touch those things. And we talked about this on the workshop, so I know that you're gonna be able to like pick right up on this, Tammy. But here are the conditions under which you can touch those things. I have to also have my hand on it, and you can hold it for five seconds, and then you can put it down. Well, we've now satisfied that urge, but he might push back, right? Because he has some oppositional tendencies. So he might push back and go, no, I want to play with it's more. That's how we play with this toy. If you want to play with another train, let's go find a train over there. And I might even say, like, if there's a thing that he's gravitating towards, like the dogs, like the trains, get him an alternative thing to mimic that. Get him a stuffed dog, right? A stuffed animal dog. I'm not saying that now we let him beat the hell out of the stuffed animal dog because then that's building neural pathways of like this is how we treat this animal. But if we're just kind of wanting to just be too handsy and too lovey-dovey with the dog, okay, well then let's redirect to this other thing, right? If we're wanting to play with the train, okay, let's play with the train that that's ours to play with that's plastic and it's not gonna break, rather than like this really nice model train that's going to break. And I think that that's so so when you say like your and was okay, how do I tell him that he's not allowed to do this because it's against the rules? Like, I don't think that that's necessarily effective at this stage. I think what you've shown or what you're telling me is that it's not working. So instead, what I would say is, what can we get him to play with instead? What can we do instead? How can we redirect? And I know that this is like really, really painful to do this because he's in a pattern right now where he's just constantly doing things to stimulate himself that are just kind of not helpful. And it's also not helpful, of course, when your partner, his dad, freaks out about it because what do we just say at the beginning? When the dogs growl at him, it's a stimulating thing, and that's why he's doing it. Okay, when when dad freaks out and has a huge, as you said, a bigger temper tantrum than his son, sometimes, right? Like, then what I'm what I'm seeing is is like that's a stimulating thing. And and and I will say, uh last piece about this, you I'm I'm assuming that you're being facetious, but you said he has bigger tangent temper tantrums than our son most of the time. The other hesitation that we have with an ODD diagnosis this young or something like that, is that so many behaviors are learned because they're modeled. And so the more dad explodes, the more he's gonna learn to explode. I think that there was a time where I thought maybe one of my kids had some kind of oppositional tendencies. And then I realized, oh man, the way that I handle conflict often when I get overwhelmed and stressed out is to yell. And all he's doing is the exact same thing that I'm doing. And so when I stop yelling, the yelling got a lot less. Still, even to this day, I will hear things that my nine-year-old says, like tonight we're hanging out, and his brother is bugging him. He's just like sitting next to him too closely, and he's like, Ollie, stop, get out of this room. And he's like, Ollie, stop, get out of this room. And I swear to you, it sounded so much like the cadence of when I yell, like, just absolutely cut me to the core to realize he was just doing exactly my like unhealthy coping mechanism, like to a tea. So if that's the other thing that's going on, like keep that. The last thing I will say about the pets is that we may just need to take a break from the dogs. I'm not saying take a break as and like give them away or something, but like we may just need a hard and fast rule that like we're never left alone with the dogs at this point because if they're already nipping at them, um we uh we we're gonna have to build some some boundaries around that. And I think that that's gonna that's gonna quickly become a bigger problem than it is right now. And so I would say, like, if you have to choose your battles, which I think you do, um, the first battle that I'm fighting is with the dogs, not even with anything else. And and understand that the a lot of what we're gonna do here in effective parenting is is winning one battle and then moving on to the next one. So I might not try and replace all of the problem things today. I might not try and tackle all of the things that he's struggling with uh listening to instructions today. I would struggle, I would start with the dogs and then I would move on to the next thing. And I think saying the dogs don't like that is helpful. Also, to a four and a half-year-old who's uh neurodivergent, I don't know how much perspective taking there is going on yet. Like that perspective taking is tricky for four and a half year olds already. And if we also have some delays, maybe because of neurodivergency and theory of mind stuff, if I don't know how severe the ASD is, then that's that's just not gonna be a compelling argument for why he shouldn't do it. Like you will get hurt is a more compelling argument, if anything. So um, yeah, and I don't mean that as like a punishment, but like this is the consequence, right? Like if you play with fire, you get burned. Like that's the consequence of that. I'm I I never, I shouldn't say never, I really, really try not to threaten my kids with punishments, but oh my goodness, do I threaten them with the consequences of the actual actions that they're taking? My kid starts playing with the oven, I go, yeah, that's super hot, you're gonna get a really bad burn, and it's gonna hurt for a week. Like, that's not bad parenting. That's like teaching your kid about the world in a positive way. So, like, I I think that that's that's okay too. All right, let me take another break. Thank you, Tammy, for that question, and uh, I'll go to the next one. Lindsay sent me a DM a long time ago, and I'm finally responding to it. Sorry, Lindsay. I think I sent you a voice note, but you said we've been in therapy for a year. ODD diagnosis, behavior plans, all of it. My son talks about me like I'm the villain. Everything I say is controlling. Every no turns into you never listen to me. He literally said the other day, you won't, you just want to win. And the part I don't say out loud is sometimes I do want to win. I'm exhausted. I feel like if I don't stay strong, he'll run the whole house. Is there any way to stop from being the bad guy without losing all authority? Because right now it feels like I only get to pick one. Lindsay, I think we need to rethink the mindset because you will never lose all authority. That's the first thing that I want to say. You need to rethink the mindset because you're never gonna lose all authority. What you're operating under is this myth that we've been sold that kids secretly want to control us, or they secretly want to control everything, and that they're really they they desire to have all control and all agency and and to just walk all over us. And if we let them, they will because they're little tyrants. Uh, kids don't want all of the control, they don't. They love that we're leading them because they look at the world and they see scary monsters out there and they want us to be in charge. They want us to be in control. That said, ODD brains are hypersensitive to power asymmetry. So just because they know that, they does not mean that they feel good about it all of the time. Sometimes, especially when they feel like they're lacking an agency and they don't understand why they're lacking an agency, that very positive experience of saying, you're the authority and you're keeping me safe becomes you're the authority and you're trying to control me. And that feels like domination. And I think every one of us can can empathize, every parent that I know can empathize with the experience of saying, I would not want to feel dominated. I would not want to feel like my whole life is controlled by somebody else. Um, when that appears in domestic relationships, we call that abuse. Whether or not there's physical violence involved or not, when one partner is massively controlling over another partner, um, it becomes a toxic relationship and we would not want that. It's just that ODD brains often will pick up on that earlier and they will feel that. And they basically your son is feeling the same thing that you're afraid of. He's feeling like if I don't have any control, if I don't have any agency, then my mom's gonna walk all over me and she like I'm gonna lose all semblance of autonomy and authority, and she's just gonna run the whole house. Like that is what his brain feels. And the fact that your brain is telling you that because of the mythology that all of us have been sold about how secretly kids are all f all demons or something, and they're just trying to destroy us. I think a lot of it comes from religion, to be honest. I think a lot of it comes from this idea that kids are like born inherently sinful, or kids are are wicked at the core, or all humans are secretly self-centered and selfish. Like, there's not a lot of evidence for that. There's a lot of evidence that humans make a lot of mistakes and that we don't always do things that are good for other people, and sometimes we're selfish, but there's not a lot of evidence. If you look at kids, I'd say most kids at the park are kinder at their core, and they learn that the the the kind of spitefulness from and malice from adults. If you walk into a kindergarten classroom, like you're not gonna see that. You sure you're gonna see some self-serving behaviors, you're gonna see probably some lying and some maybe not great sharing all the time and things like that, but like like actually intentionally hurting someone, like adults do that, kids don't do that. So we've been sold a lot of this, but like I don't think that it's helpful. And and you're in a you're locked in an ideological power struggle over who gets to be in control, and you don't need to be because you're in control. So now that you know that, now that you can embrace this beautiful, new, but actually it's always been the reality that you are in control as the parent and you are the authority, you can stop wielding that authority with fear. And I don't mean to like say that you're afraid, but all of us, when we feel threatened, get afraid. And you have named that you feel threatened. You have named that you sometimes just want to win because you're afraid that if you don't, it'll spiral out of your control. What do we know about human behavior writ large when you trap somebody in a corner, when you make them afraid, all of their logical and rational thinking goes out the window. And so I think if we stop being afraid that our son's trying to take over, if we stop being afraid that we're gonna lose all control, if we stop being afraid, we don't need to be the bad guy because we can hold boundaries while granting autonomy within those boundaries. Without feeling like the autonomy that we grant within those boundaries makes us lose control. Let me give you a great example. If you're going off like to the park with your kid, and you show up at the park and you have 10 minutes to play, I know a lot of parents who don't even stop at the park because they go, I'm never gonna be able to get them off the playground in 10 minutes. Like they're gonna just start playing and then they're gonna fight me, and then it's gonna just be a horrible mess, and like it's gonna be awful for the whole day. And so they don't even go to the park. And then, say later, your kid is talking to you and they say, Why didn't we go to the park when we were on the way home? We always go to the park. And you say, Well, you tell the truth, which I think is important with kids. You say, Yeah, you know what, we were driving home and we only had 10 minutes, and so I didn't want you to start playing because I was afraid that you were gonna just, you know, control and blah blah blah and and stay forever and you weren't gonna let me go home when we needed to go home. Your kid is going to feel in that moment like you've stolen something from them because you assumed the worst. And by assuming the worst, you've actually almost guaranteed that that's how they're going to act next time. Now, flip that and reverse it and say, Okay, we're we need to leave the we're we're we're stopping at the park before you know you you're gonna put the you're gonna use a uh a binary, you're gonna give them a choice, but you're gonna stop at the park and you're gonna say before you even get out of the car, you're gonna do their first choice. Hey, we only have 10 minutes to play. Can we play for 10 minutes and leave, or should we just skip this? No, let's let's let's uh get out and let's play. Okay, cool. So in 10 minutes we're gonna leave. Then great. You've made the choice that you want to play for 10 minutes rather than not play at all. Say it out loud. You've made the choice. You're in charge, right? Now, time goes on, time goes on. Five minute warning, two-minute warning. Okay, do one more thing, and we're gonna go. By the way, that's a great way of leaving the park. Now you're gonna choose, right? How you leave. Hey, that last one before you get to that last piece. Do you want to leave now or do you want to do one more thing before you go? One more thing. Okay, great. You're in charge. You go do it. Pick whatever you want. Now it goes down. And the whole time you're just offering these types of choices, right? Do you want you can even ask, do this earlier, right? Five minutes in. Hey, do you want to leave now or you want to leave in five minutes? I'm okay with either option. You choose. Like every place that you can, you're gonna give authority. And this is not the false choice that you give a two-year-old of who you want to put on your right shoe or your left shoe first, right? I'm not saying that's not effective. There's there is a place for that. But this is a different type of choice. This is a real autonomy choice in the midst of their dysfunction. You're giving them real stakes choices. Do you want this or that? And then when they choose within that, the power asymmetry does not feel as threatening to them because they're feeling like they have a sense of agency and autonomy within the control system without feeling dominated. Right? If you were truly a, you know, dictator who just told them exactly what to do and ran everything and they had to do everything you said without question, you would never give them these choices and they can feel that. At the same time, they can also feel when you are feeling exhausted and trying to win at all costs because you're afraid that they're grabbing a hole and they're gonna run the whole cop the house without you. They're also picking up on that. And so it's really it comes from, and I know this is such a terrible thing to say all the time, but it really comes from having the confidence that you should have as a parent to just own your spot because when you're a confident leader, your kids want to follow you. Like and and maybe that's a good place to end this episode radical acceptance, not only of your kid, but also of yourself. Right? I it was Tammy who was on the workshop that I just ran. The five hacks that are gonna uh change your life. That five brain hacks, the whole point of that was because I wanted to give parents confidence. I just wanted to give them the confidence to have a plan because regardless of what the plan is, when parents have a plan and they're enacting the plan and they're just like leading, they feel like they feel so much better and their kids feel so much better. And so you need radical flexibility with ODD kids because they're sometimes you're gonna try and you know implement the plan and they're just gonna go nuts and they're gonna push back on you and you're gonna have to learn to be flexible. But but I actually don't think that you need to be brutally consistent as much as you need to be brutally confident. Because if you're confident, then you can be flexible. If you're confident, you can give them choices. If you're confident, you can start with one thing and then move up to the next thing. If you're confident, you can underreact to the breaking of the thing. If you're confident, you can redirect instead of constantly being like, no, no, no, no, no. Like if you're confident, you can do the things that you need to do that can make their life easier. And the beautiful thing is they know that it's rough. They know that this isn't fun for you either. They're having a hard time, they're not giving you a hard time, and they're gonna thrive, absolutely thrive, when you start seeing them for what they are, which is just just as my friend says, I have a friend who's um a child psychiatrist, psychologist, sorry, and he says, with ODD, he says, uh, ODD is PDA, and PDA is a persistent drive for autonomy. Not pathological demand avoidance, it's a persistent drive for autonomy. They need more autonomy, not less. And your whole life will change when you start seeing that. And so I hope that you take this and you run with it to do all of the wonderful things that you do with your wonderful kids. I think your kids are great, and I can't wait to see what they do in the future. Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. 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