Have you been noticing your child’s inability to learn, maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships, inappropriate type of behavior or a general pervasive mood of unhappiness? Is your child suffering from behavioral disorder?
Children are usually impulsive, naughty and hyperactive in their growing ages. However, some children possess these traits in the extreme, making them vulnerable to most common behavioral disorders in children.
What are the characteristics one must look out for?
Some behavioral disorder symptoms that are easily noticeable among children who suffer from behavioral disorders include hyperactivity, aggression, lower interaction with others, immaturity and learning difficulties. They even exhibit distorted thinking, bizarre motor acts and mood swings to further draw the parent’s attention towards their disorder.
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What Causes The Behavioral Disorder Among Children?
There is a no actual cause of emotional disturbance, although factors like hereditary, stress, diet, family functioning are few reasons why they must be going through the turmoil in their head.
What Are The Different Kinds Of Behavioral Disorders Among Children?
#1. Oppositional Defiant Disorder
If your child is experiencing anger and irritation, argues with elders and passes mean, spiteful and vindictive remarks at people, there are chances that your child may be suffering from Oppositional Defiant Disorder. The signs of ODD include aggressive behavior that lasts for a long time, happens often and creates multiple problems in the child’s life.
About 1% to 11% of children have Oppositional Defiant Disorder, with figures suggesting that one in ten children below the age of 12 years are believed to have ODD. Not just that, the findings reveal that more boys have it than girls. However, the ratio balances post puberty.
The duration of this disorder cannot be determined as it varies from child to child. Some kids recover from the behavioral disorder with age, the others go on to develop conduct disorder and other mental disorder problems.
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#2. Conduct Disorder
If your child is aggressive towards beings, animals or people, harms someone’s property on purpose, lies about everything, break into somebody’s house to steal their valuables or disobeys strict rules imposed on them, he or she may be experiencing conduct disorders.
The type of behavioral disorder usually happens between the age of 6 years and 15 years, with studies showing that children getting affected from this disorder range from 2% to 10%.
More common among boys than girls, the symptoms of this disease seems to vanish with time. But there are exceptions. Some children may develop an adult form of the disorder called Antisocial Personality Disorder leading to isolation and alienation in adulthood. Some may fall prey to substance use problems and result in complications with the law. Thus, it is essential to maintain a vigilant eye on these set of children and counter the problem as soon as it arises.
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#3. Intermittent Explosive Disorder
This disorder is noticeable in children who are extremely aggressive and vent out their anger in words and action. If your child experiences sudden anger bursts, leading to destructive activities such as damaging property, hurting animal and humans, you must seek medical intervention to help you child fight the disorder.
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#4. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Amongst other child behavior disorders, the most common one is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in which children face difficulties in concentration, forget instructions, are impulsive in nature and experience constant restlessness.
Although the figures are not as alarming as others, approximately 2% to 5% of children suffer from this behavioral disorder, with boys outshining girls.
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How Can One Treat These Behavioral Disorders In Children?
If you do not pay attention to your child in these tender years of age and cure them for disruptive behavior disorders, they will translate into dysfunctional adults. Thus, it is important to recognize the early signs and cure them, before it goes out of hand.
Treatment of such children is not pre-defined and varies from child to child. However, some factors that are common to all for treatment include:
#1. Parental Education: Couples should learn how to communicate with their child and develop a unique bond with them.
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#2. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: This form of therapy teaches the child to control their thoughts and behavior through self-inspection.
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#3. Social Training: Since the child lacks basic social skills, the task of this therapy is to teach the child some skills such as how to converse or play cooperatively with other children.
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#4. Anger Management: This treatment is the essential one as it teaches the child ways to manage their anger, divert the destructive streaks and engage in a calm and peaceful environment.
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#5. Provide Support: Such children always require support from maximum people to help them stand up and participate in the race of life along with other normal children.
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#6. Encouragement: There is no better medicine than encouragement. Many children, suffering from the behavioral disorder, experience multiple failures in life and require motivation to excel in their respective fields and build self-esteem.
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#7. Drugs & Medication: All of the therapies mentioned above can help a child become more confident. However, the efforts can go in vain if proper medications are not administered to the child to help the body fight the disorder. Hence, timely medicines remain the top priority.
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If you have more information regarding behavioral disorders in children, we would love to hear from you. Kindly use the comment box to share your thoughts and opinions with us
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