Summary
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Pathological Demand Avoidance syndrome (PDA) can look similar, but they're actually very different.
In this Essentials Episode of School Behaviour Secrets we explore key differences between ODD and PDA, because understanding these conditions is crucial so you can adopt the correct strategies to provide effective pupil support.
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Show notes / transcription
[00:00:00 - 00:02:25] Simon Currigan
ODD, which is oppositional defiant disorder, and PDA, which is pathological demand avoidance syndrome, can look similar. Refusal, not following instructions or requests, not doing work, defiance, rejecting authority, that kind of thing. But they're actually very different conditions. And when it comes to supporting pupils with additional needs in school, having the right strategy to support the right child is crucial. So join us for an essentials episode of the School Behaviour Secrets podcast to find out more. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan.
My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world, so you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi, everyone. Simon Currigan here back with another popular essentials episode of School Behaviour Secrets where we dive into some key strategies and insights from an earlier episode that can make a real difference for the students that you work with right away. And remember, if you're loving the show, please do us a favour and hit that subscribe button in your podcast app so you never miss out on our latest tips and tricks.
So today, we're gonna go back to episode 93 where my co host, Emma Shackleton, and I discuss the differences between ODD, which is oppositional defiance disorder, and PDA, pathological demand avoidance. ODD is a condition where pupils find it hard to manage their impulses and are driven by a really strong need for control. Whereas PDA is a condition where anxiety is much more of a massive factor and the children aren't necessarily seeking control. What they're trying to do is escape overwhelming demands, which is a slightly different thing and needs a different approach, but it can result in what look from the outside like very similar behaviours. So let's hit play and find out more.
[00:02:28 - 00:03:06] Emma Shackleton
So ODD stands for oppositional defiant disorder. Oppositional means opposing, as in taking an opposing view or being opposed to doing something you've been asked to do. So most commonly in school, this would look like refusing to do your work, or follow the teacher's instructions or actually doing the exact opposite of what they've been asked to do. If you ask them to write in pen, they'd get a pencil. If you ask them to walk quietly down the hall, they'd run and shout, that kind of thing.
[00:03:06 - 00:05:37] Simon Currigan
Interestingly, ODD is actually a form of impulse control disorder. So what is impulse control disorder? So Viktor Frankl famously wrote there's a gap between stimulus and response. So we have an idea, something happens to us and then we have an idea about how to react and there's a gap where we evaluate whether that's a good idea or not and then we act. And an impulse control disorder means that that gap is either very short or hardly existent at all so we're doing very little assessment of an idea that we might get before we carry it out. So someone might take our pencil and our immediate thought might be, I'm gonna thump them, and then there's a gap where we might evaluate that idea and think about whether it's gonna get us into trouble and how it's gonna affect our relationship with the other child before we then act. And we might then decide to change our action or we might decide to to carry on and fund them.
But there is an assessment there that requires a little bit of time. And if you have difficulty controlling your impulses, that idea bubbles up into your head and before you've assessed it in any great depth, your body just sort of executes that idea. And the thing to bear in mind when we're talking about ODD here is that no two children with ODD are the same, and we have to treat them as individuals. But there are some common threads to their behaviour. So let's dig down and have a look at that. ODD tends not to be diagnosed until the age of 4 and above for very good reasons. Before that age, it's quite normal for kids to have tantrums and refusals when they're asked to do something.
Many children go through the terrible twos. They age when they start to get a little bit of independence. They're able to move around safely. They can communicate effectively, and they discover that they don't like adults putting limits on their wants or their actions. They know what they want. They wanna go out and get it without an adult standing in their way, and that can result in tantrums and saying no and stamping your feet and that kinda thing. Now most kids will grow out of those tantrums by the age of 4 or at least grow out of having them frequently because they're starting to learn to regulate their emotions a little.
They're starting to accept social expectations, and they're becoming a little bit more reasonable. But if those tantrums carry on for longer, then it might be a sign that something else is going on. It could be, not necessarily is, but it could be a sign that the child's behaviour is being driven by something like oppositional defiance disorder.
[00:05:37 - 00:07:40] Emma Shackleton
Interestingly as well, ODD can actually develop in teenagers as kids reach adolescence. So children who were quite easygoing and reasonable at primary school can suddenly change their behaviour. And again, this might be a sign of teenage onset ODD. And just to be clear here, this is going beyond the stereotype of an argumentative or grumpy teenager. We're talking about significantly challenging behaviours at home and at school that are predominantly oppositional in nature. The tricky thing is that ODD often presents in children alongside other conditions. So you'll often see a child with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and ODD, or they might have autism and ODD.
In fact, about 4 out of 10 students with ADHD also end up with an ODD diagnosis. And that makes sense really if you think about that idea that it's an impulse control disorder, because that's a a strong factor of ADHD too. Obviously, ODD can only be diagnosed by a medical professional, not by a teacher or anybody who works in education. Okay. So let's compare that to pathological demand avoidance or PDA, sometimes called PDA syndrome. PDA is a very specific form of autism that presents a little differently to autism generally. So it can be easily overlooked.
But one of the important things to remember is children with PDA often have all of the related difficulties or challenges related to autism, but they're not necessarily as obvious in the classroom. So there's a difference between demand avoidance and pathological demand avoidance.
[00:07:40 - 00:09:40] Simon Currigan
Yeah. Demand avoidance is something we all get as adults or kids, and it essentially means not wanting to do something that you've been asked to do. So someone's placed a demand on you, then you don't like it. You're resistant to that demand. There's actually a term for it in psychology called reactance. Demand avoidance from time to time in children is quite common depending on the task or what we've asked them to do. We all have things that we don't like doing.
We don't like being made to do them. We don't like being told to do things at certain times, then we all put up a little resistance. The key thing here is that feeling does not have a negative impact on our bodies or our biology, and it doesn't represent a sort of general response to people placing demands on us or asking us to do certain things.
Now PDA is different. The pathological in pathological demand avoidance means abnormal or dysfunctional. If you have PDA and someone places a demand on you, your body reacts with a rush of stress chemicals that fuel huge amounts of anxiety. They put you in this heightened emotional state that feels like it's going to overwhelm you. And the more those demands feel outside of your control, the more anxious you become until you reach a point where you can't cope with those feelings anymore. So unsurprisingly, one of the behaviours you'll see in class is resistance to tasks. Usually, this starts with what's called social manipulation.
That's where the child bargains or they negotiate with you about how the task will be done or whether it needs to be done, or maybe they engage in task avoidance. So instead of getting on with a piece of work, they'll spend 20 minutes sharpening every pencil they can find in the classroom or looking through their drawer for just the right ruler. They find every sort of non violent means of avoiding that task to try and escape the anxiety associated with it.
[00:09:40 - 00:11:00] Emma Shackleton
Another behaviour that you could easily miss is during whole class input. If the child feels like they can't cope with the demands of having to sit and listen to the teacher, they might use a strategy such as putting on a face that looks like they're listening, but their mind is actually deliberately focused elsewhere. It's kind of like a passive resistance. And then, of course, if you keep pressuring and pressuring the child and this social manipulation technique isn't effective for them, their anxiety is going to shoot up, and you're likely to see the child become overwhelmed. And that's where you're going to get a meltdown or see the child engaging in other escape behaviour, maybe walking out of the classroom or refusing, for example, because you're pushing them towards that classic fight or flight response. That means while for other children, setting firm expectations and holding them to account can be really effective and actually improve behaviour, for children with PDA, the opposite is true. Setting firm expectations and holding them to account is going to be counterproductive.
It's like throwing more pressure into the pressure cooker. At some point, the walls won't hold anymore, and the whole thing's gonna blow.
[00:11:02 - 00:11:56] Simon Currigan
Okay. So that seems like a good place to press pause, but you can see why picking the right strategy for supporting these children is so important. Because in either case, a strategy that would work for ODD, say, might accidentally make the anxieties of a child with PDA worse, and then you'd see the knock on effect of more challenging behavior in the classroom and vice versa. If you want to know more, then please open the episode description and click the link that I put in there for you to head back to the original episode.
That's episode number 93. Thanks for tuning in to another essentials episode. Your feedback is the spark that keeps the School Behaviour Secrets team alight. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review the podcast. It makes a huge difference to us and the podcast. I hope you have a brilliant week, and I'll catch you next time.
(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)
