Oppositional-Defiance Disorder, ADHD, and Autism

Anyone who has a child with ADHD should read Diane M. Kennedy's The ADHD Autism Connection. This is perhaps especially true if your child has been diagnosed with both ADHD and ODD (Oppositional-Defiance Disorder), since if you combine the behaviors of ADHD and ODD, you get the behaviors of someone with Asperger's.

Of those with ADHD, 50-65% are also diagnosed with ODD. This would mean that if 3-7% of children have ADHD, and about half of those have ODD, and if children with that combination really have Asperger's, then around 4% (including those diagnosed with Asperger's) have Asperger's.

For those not familiar with ODD, Kennedy lists the behaviors as "stubbornness, defiance, arguing, ignoring rules, hostile behaviors, temper tantrums, and an unwillingness to compromise" (55).

She also quotes the DSM-IV-TR as defining ODD as

a recurrent pattern of negative, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures that persists for at least 6 months and is characterized  by the frequent occurrence of at least four of the following behaviors: losing temper . . . arguing with adults . . . actively defying or refusing to comply with the requests or rules of adults . . . deliberately doing things that will annoy other people . . . being touchy or easily annoyed by others . . . being angry and resentful . . . or being spiteful or vindictive. (cit. pg. 55)

Let's face it. I've been accused of being stubborn, my parents complained that I was always argumentative and that I liked to aggravate people, and I'm easily annoyed by what I perceived to be peoples' endless idiocies. I fight against being angry and resentful. Fortunately, I have never been spiteful or vindictive. But given the fact that I exhibit all the rest, I would be diagnosed as having ODD -- except that I have Asperger's, and these behaviors are already included in my syndrome.

Kennedy also cites Lorna Wing on the ways we with autism use language, with Wing saying we have a "tendency to talk on . . . or to ask repetitive questions regardless of the answers, or most irritating of all, to engage in arguments that are endless because the child always finds a new objection to whatever is suggested" (cit. 50). Kennedy also points out that these are typical of children with ADHD as well.

Now, I want you to think about some of the things listed. What kind of world would be live in if we didn't have people who questioned authority, argued, defied rules, asked repetitive questions, and always found new objections to whatever answers are given? This sounds like the definition of every philosopher, entrepreneur, inventor, scientist, and artist who ever existed. Meaning, these "irritating" features are what are necessary for there to have been any kinds of advancements beyond that of the chimpanzee troupes.

So we again see a list of traits that are presented as negative, but are in fact positive from a social standpoint, since without them there could not have been complex human societies.