{Parenting a child with ODD}

Dawn has always been my problem child. She has always been hard to handle. Throwing fits constantly, not being able to hear 'no' without flipping out on someone. She loves to drag you into a fight or to change the subject completely when you're trying to explain something to her. She also loves to try to manipulate the situations to make the adult she is arguing with sound like they're just being to her, and that she did nothing wrong. When in fact that is not the case. She "tattles" on me to my sisters in law and my grandparents and her grandpa (D's dad) telling them I ground her for nothing and she doesn't know why we take things from her. She has out right lied to D's dad before. I've never seen a kid play someone as well as she can. Well, I take that back honestly because I've seen Cassie do it too. So I'm betting she has ODD too.

For those of you that don't know what ODD (or Opositional Defiance Disorder) is here is a list of the symptoms:
-often loses temper
-often argues with adults
-often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules
-often deliberately annoys people
-often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
-is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
-is often angry and resentful
-is often spiteful or vindictive

That describes Dawn to a T.

So because I know this now, I have to change the way I parent her. I've tried to reward her for being good with getting her nails done and such but that doesn't really work. If she doesn't get it one week she is pretty much done with the whole thing and won't participate the next week. So I'm going to have to figure out what I can do when she doesn't make her goal that week. Maybe some smaller reward for being close? I don't know. If anyone out there has any ideas I'm open to them.

I think I need to make a list of rules and our expectations for her and start there. And I also need to make sure I don't let her get me so upset that I punish her in the moment. She wants me to punish her in a way that makes me more miserable than her. I'm getting better at not doing that, I make sure her punishments don't affect anyone but her. But sometimes in the middle of arguing with her, I will blurt out a punishment that I can't possibly stick to and she lives for that.

I wish there was some text book way to help me help her. I will keep you all posted on what I decide on for consequences and rewards. And what we decide the rules and expectations are. I hope incan navigate my way through this.