First off, I feel your pain. On one end you love your child, but on the other end is someone whom you don't even know or like and don't want to be around. Three years ago I met my fiance and his two little boys. I already had three kids of my own, so this was already going to be a challenge as it was. Over time, I realized his youngest had ADHD and recently his brother was diagnosed with ADHD and ODD. Why it took longer for the older child to show signs I don't know. Both are on medication for the ADHD and supposedly it should help with the ODD as well. So far so good. We have our good days and some bad days. This morning was a bad start to our day. Just a quick little background on my soon to be step-sons: They live with us full time since their mother got into some trouble causing her to lose custody. She gets visitation every other weekend. When my fiance's oldest gets upset and things aren't going his way, he blames us for his unhappiness and says hurtful things just to try and hurt our feelings. Thankfully this morning he chose to go out and punch on our punching bag instead of other family members or walls in our house. He has in the past thrown objects at people but hasn't done that since being placed on medication and seeing a therapist specialized in childhood trauma. My fiance has had to restrain him before so he wouldn't hurt himself or others. When we see behaviors like this, neither of us is alone with the child. If needed we record the incident on our cell phone to prove nothing was being done to "abuse" or harm our children. All his problems stem from him not being able to be with his mother the way he wants to be. Unfortunately, I am the one who gets the majority of the backlash from him since I'm the "mother" figure that's stable in his daily life. I would suggest having your child start seeing a therapist if they aren't already. CBT(Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is quite helpful and involves the whole family unit. I'm not a big fan of kids being on stimulant meds but in our case it was the right choice. At least for now. I hope I've helped you feel less like you are alone in these issues.

Your situation is extremely similar to ours. His mom left 2.5 years ago and he has been in therapy almost since the beginning with 2 different kinds of therapists. He has developed facial ticks from the stress and he can't be on the better ADHD meds because they can make ticks worse. So, latest developement is he has been hospitalized at a mental hospital, and told them all kinds of things his father does to him, which are all completely untrue, and they legally had to call child protective services about it. So now there is a case open about my husband abusing him. So on top of him being uncontrollable and trying to deal with that, now we have to worry about keeping him out of jail.

I understand completely how you feel about this,our Grandson has to be restrained at times,for his own safety and for those around him,my husband had to restrain him this week and he got an arm free,when my husband tried to get his arm back in hold his face took a knock from my husbands elbow,my husband was so upset about it,maybe we should take advice from the other poster and video the meltdowns and how he needs to be restrained.

I completely understand your situation.

My son is 13 and was diagnosed with ODD about 4 months ago. We've had issues with him trying to run away when he gets upset for the last couple years. The last time he tried to run away, we were at a friends house. Long story short, he left, and we finally spotted him on a road next to a wooded area and we couldn't convince him to come in the car. It was already dark so we decided to call 911 because he gets in these suicidal moods that really scare us. Cops finally came and he ran into the woods. We couldn't find him for about an hour. During this time, the cops were scolding me, saying that it's my job as a parent to restrain him and not let him get away if he could hurt himself. I told cops of a situation before where I had restrained my son, and he started saying I had hurt him. They said not to worry about that, but of course, we all worry about that. Anyway, my son finally came out of the woods and he got scolded by cops.

A couple months later, my son had another fit, where he actually pushed my wife down on the ground, and I grabbed him and pinned him down (he's gotten knife's before and threatened us and didn't want to get to any situation like that). Wife called cops because he was out of control, and unfortunately cops took like 40 minutes to get there.

My son would not let up fighting me. I felt horrible since I was pinning his arms with my knees, and I know it was painful. But if I'd get off for a second, he'd make a move by trying to punch me or trying to get away. Anyway, I thought for sure I was going to go to jail because I felt I was potentially hurting him by pinning him down.

I don't know if I did the right thing, but when the cops finally got there, my son was telling them what I did to him and that I had hurt him. The cops pulled me aside and asked for my version of events, and they supported me. They told me I did the right thing, and they told my son that I did the right thing and had a good talk with him that parents have the responsibility to keep kids safe and that I should restrain him in the future if we felt like he could hurt himself or anyone else. I still feel horrible for doing that to him, but we haven't had any situation escalate to that level since. I'm hoping my son learned from that.

With my 11yr old daughter I can't restrain her as this turns her into a "demon". She is ODD and ADHD and has anxiety on top of that. One trigger I have noticed is if the adult gets escalated at all she escalates ten times faster. I have to talk to her almost as if I were talking to a small child....if she notices me being stern or upset she escalates. This is so hard to do in the moment of chaos. I'm glad to see I'm not alone and that my kid is not some horrible person just that she has a disability....she cant control her temper on her own. I wish I could say it gets better with time but she has had these behaviors since a toddler and they just progressed until she got in school suspension and then I asked her psychologist to refer us to someone for meds. She is on Concerta along with Celexa and was once on Intuniv....we are seeing more behaviors again so we are increasing her dose of Celexa. Also she has adjustment disorder....anytime there is a change....going back to school, summer vacation, etc we see an increase in behaviors. I took parenting classes to help as well. I've done the nurtured heart approach and will be starting the Love and Logic approach soon. Best of luck to you.