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Originally Posted by +rep_lol
oh boy, this might be long.
lots of grounding in my youth, tons of "talks" about my attitude/behavior which i mostly spaced out and ignored, and eventually once i got thrown out of school in 10th grade, they basically just went fairly hands-off and gave me more autonomy/freedom to make and (hopefully) learn from my mistakes. their unspoken position eventually became hey, if you focus enough on school to maintain a good GPA ("good" in those days was like 3-4 not 4+), we'll turn a blind eye to all the weed smoking, skateboarding, and class skipping. i think they sensed at a certain point that i was miserable, had no real direction or motivation, and was full of self-hatred (which caused a certain insecurity in me which i refused to acknowledge, leading to anxiety and eventually depression) from an entire youth spent rebelling against anybody in a position of authority.
i think that matters were made worse re: my ODD when my mother decided to enroll me in the same christian school as my sister (~age 7-14), and i feel like they recognized the damage that it had done when i entered my teenage years. one of the things about ODD is that, as a kid, you feel like you're smarter and know better than the adults who tell you things that you don't want to hear- ESPECIALLY when you feel like you can't relate to them on any level. when all the authority figures in your life are christian zealots who are plainly idiotic and hypocritical, it magnifies the feelings of resentment which makes the behavioral/attitude problems even worse. because **** these people, it's that simple. unhealthy or non-existent coping skills are another hallmark. kids' brains aren't developed enough to really grasp the concepts of long-term consequences and nuance- i just decided at some point that all the adults were idiots and i wasn't going to listen to them anymore, period.
once i reached a point in my late 20s, i had some experiences with people, some of whom were friends, that made me recognize just how much of a rageaholic i was and how much of a selfish narrow-sighted ******* i could be. seeing other people excel in poker during times when i struggled also reinforced that i wasn't as smart as i thought i was. i also had an experience during a mushroom trip which must have activated whatever area of my brain is responsible for feeling empathy. as a poker player, i recognized that self-reflection is vital to survival and progress, but i wasn't honest with myself about the extent to which i was cognitively flawed. so i decided i was going to make some changes in my life to be a better person, and while there was a lot of severe depression resulting from it (sucks to "look in the mirror", so to speak, and not like what you see), it's worked out pretty well in the end.
i'm sure my wife will always be able to (rightfully) tease me about the way my ODD still shapes my worldview and my behavior, but i'm a big boy now and i've worked hard to recognize/accept my personal shortcomings and make positive changes. and at 35 years old, it's still an ongoing process. my mother's love, patience, and openness in communication has been vital to my development as an adult (and that goes for my dad too, but he's kind of an introvert and is very typical in his distaste for conversations revolving around feelings and what not).
i think for anybody who suspects their kid has ODD or doesn't respect them as parents or whatever else, it's important for your kid to not view you as an adversary, otherwise they won't listen to you. obviously it's bad to just be their best friend and give them everything they want, and it's a delicate balance- how do i speak to my child with the proper tone/insight/criticism to keep him or her from going on the defensive and rejecting all of the extremely valid things that i have to say? it's a maturity thing and a respect issue, and kids with ODD in particular are going to be immature due to deficient coping skills, and not going to respect authority for authority's sake- respect comes from a shared understanding of the world and feeling like somebody has your back when push comes to shove. and my parents always did, i was just too selfish/immature to realize it most of the time because i had made up my mind long ago that adults just didnt "get it". i'm not entirely sure how to speed up the process of maturity in a kid/teenager, but i began to show real progress there (as an adult, lol) once i knocked down emotional barriers and was truly honest with myself and my mother about all the feelings i had and the negative impacts that those feelings had on my life and my relationships with other people. i found talking with her to be very therapeutic, as i was always the type to bottle things up inside (again, another unhealthy coping mechanism). so like, counselling from a solid therapist seems like a really good start for anybody who suspects that their kid is having these same issues.
so tl;dr, it takes a lot of love, patience, guidance, and forgiveness. i am eternally grateful that my parents always had a lot of that.
wow thats a really good story i dont have odd. MY story is different when i was 13 I was 5'6" had sever skin problems and braces and like at lunch there was the table order of popular kids, the other popular kids, the cool nerds, the jocks , the other jocks, then the average kids for like 4 tables then the stoners and castaways , then the so called freaks, the the disabled kids, then the stunted then an empty table and in the very corner was me. I would eat alone and make an imaginary world to escape into. I had trouble talking to anyone.
But I did have two really good friends from egypt. one was an egyptian kid and the other was my friend pete who lived in egypt for 5 years because his father was a military commander of some sort. He was a major. I would go home and yell the entire time at my parents all sorts of nonsensical things and then me and pete would smoke cigarettes and talk about stuff in the woods. There was a really cool fort there and a swing and I sat on that swing an average of 48 hours per day. I also liked rollerblading. and magic the gathering of which i was a top ten player out of 200-300 registered players in the state. I never went to parties except parties thrown by my egyptian friend in the woods. No one would talk to me because I looked kind of scary with my scratched up face and because i never looked at anyone.
One of the reasons I said in that thread one time looks are more important than
confidence is I had a dramatic change in looks over the course of a few months
and that caused things to come together at 15-16. I grew from 5'6" to 5'9" and a half , lost my braces and my skin problem disappeared. When i walked down the hallways I didnt expect anyone to talk to me.
I became very attractive. So one day I was walking down the hall and a very attractive girl was like hey how are you? are you new? I turned around expecting to see a guy who looks like cory monteith. but no one was behind me. I didn't know what to say since no one talks to me. After school that day I went into a subway and overheard some girls nervously deciding on how to introduce themselves to me. MY social skills in a normal context had deteriorated from years of being not allowed to eat at home, constantly treated as a ****** and being isolated. So the things I said got interpreted much better than they would have before and I gained a reputation as a reserved cool guy who did his own thing and at that time as a bit of a jerk. The jerk part was basically because I didn't know what to say, realized what not to say by then and so I often came across as uncaring. I went to a lot of parties and became fairly popular and made a decent amount of friends. and girlfriends. After that things got really weird. my dad became the ceo of a company with hundreds of employees. my cousin inherited several million dollars and a number of sportscars. I became involved in a gay sex orgy group. For a brief period of time I was living a kind of wasp fantasy lifestyle. This didnt last. I spent way too much money, did some extremely stupid stuff, got excommunicated from my family. I got straight fs a few semesters and basically kansas state was the only college i could go to. At kansas stater I became a severe alcoholic, skpped finals , slowly lost all my friends. I would drink for days straight. my dorm roomate left and I didnt even notice. when i got kicked out I was sent to a psychiatrist and my dorm room was full of bugs.
I decided I didnt need any of those things and built my own life from scratch. That didnt go so well either. I work in a grocery store.