If you see that your child's behavior matches that of a child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, you should seek medical attention as soon as possible. Though there aren't exact treatments for this disorder, it can still help to receive the advice of a doctor. Your doctor will be able to point you and your troubled youth in the right direction.

Once you've received a second opinion from a medical expert as well as possible treatment methods, you can begin the treatment process. This type of disorder could very well stay with your child for some time. Understanding what it is and how you can help mitigate its affects is a great way to keep it under control.

Peer pressure begins in a child's life pretty early in the game. Peer pressure is what makes a young boy in kindergarten stay silent during quiet time when the teacher promises the group a treat if no one whispers or talks to their neighbor. It isn't fear of the teacher admonishing him, but the unpleasant thought of displeasing his friends - simple peer pressure with no ill effects.

Peer Pressure Can Sometimes Act For Good

When the young boy is 11 and in a football league and he just doesn't want to go to practice, peer pressure is probably the key incentive for the young boy to go anyway. He knows all the boys will laugh at him and call him a wusp if he doesn't show up ready to play. Harmless peer pressure that resulted in him doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. If the reason he attended practice was because he understood he was responsible for a commitment , then that would have been praiseworthy. But peer pressure has no discretion and doesn't involve a moral choice.

Peer pressure can serve as a positive inducement for a child to conform for the sake of civility and order. Peer pressure can give a child a sense of respecting the wishes of others. Like all in life, peer pressure can be used for good or ill.

If this same young man a few years down the road takes a joint because of the same peer pressure, or a troubled teen girl gives in to peer pressure to engage in sex, then peer pressure again has exerted it's force, this time for ill. Peer pressure will always exist. What an at-risk teen is taught to do in response to peer pressure is the key.

Learning to Resist Peer Pressure

A troubled teen needs to realize where peer pressure ends and his moral code begins. Peer pressure is the fulcrum , a choice is the lever. It is a choice not to muster up the necessary will to do what is right in the face of peer pressure.

Since public schools are not designed to teach teens a sense of self autonomy nor to instruct in the disciplines necessary to teach a teen how to resist peer pressure, it falls upon the more comprehensive approach offered by troubled teen boarding schools and military schools to offer programs that will teach an at-risk teen how to make informed and conscious choices based on "doing the right thing" rather than cave in to peer pressure.

In order to help your defiant teen improve his or her behavior, you need to seek outside help. Seeking the assistance of child counselors and therapists, for instance, is a great idea. Your troubled teen will be able to discuss his or her problems with the therapist and will then be able to work to overcome them.

You shouldn't look at your troubled child as a threat or a nuisance. Your child is just in need of help and you can be the one to give them that help. Go ahead and be your child's hero in a way you never imagine.

"What are you rebelling against?"

"Watcha got?

It could be said that the image of the defiant teen is part of American culture and lore. The quotes above are from the movie 'The Wild Ones', a tale of two teenage motor cycle gangs, starring the defiant teen figure of that era, Marlon Brando. From the same era we have "Rebel Without a Cause", starring another poster boy for that era's defiant teen, the tragic and iconic James Dean.

In the fifties and sixties, the defiant teen was known as a "rebel" and romanticized in West Side Story, laughed at in Dobie Gillis, and found great notoriety in Elvis' Presley's gyrating pelvis. Them the sixties arrived and the defiant teens of that era took themselves way too seriously.

Whatcha got left?

In the 60's the new incarnation of the defiant teen grew out his hair and professed free love and spit on soldiers. The defiant teen parading as a hippie is still held out by the boomer generation as some type of dreamy hero. Finally, we come to today's current defiant teen who continues with this national obsession to bend every rule and eliminate every boundary.

Though over the decades the face of the defiant teen has changed, the apparent need to idealize rebellion has not. If today's defiant teen were asked "What are you rebelling against?" the answer ought to be "whatcha got left?"

When the Defiant Teen Becomes Destructive Teen

Or so it would seem. In each succeeding generation the limits that define what a defiant teen will do or say continue to be stretched incredibly and dangerously thin.

But when is the defiant teen simply testing their boundaries? How does a parent know what behavior to curb and what is acceptable and non-destructive for the defiant teen to act out?

Defiance can be a healthy mode of behavior if it takes the form of some type of intelligent rebellion. The toddler defying the guidance of a mother's hand when learning to walk is natural defiance. But when does healthy defiance become the destructive behavior of the defiant teen?

When it destroys the defiant teen. When it serves absolutely no purpose, psychologically or practically. When the defiant teen is testing his limitless ego as opposed to testing the limits of his parents patience. The defiant teen becomes destructive when the parent fails to take his challenge to heart.

Boarding schools are environments where teenagers can feel uninhibited to express their true emotions. This is a freedom they might not have in an unforgiving local school environment. They will be surrounded by trained specialists who will truly be able to help them resolve their issues in an open and friendly manner.

Boarding school programs could be the answer to all of your teenager's needs. Looking into this type of program is easy and worthwhile. And remember, your child could really benefit!

Just the phrase, "therapeutic boarding schools", can make parents of troubled teens uneasy. Not all teenagers are candidates for teen boarding schools. Your teen's therapist or high school counselor can advise you if there are therapeutic programs that your teenager can participate in while still living at home.

Sometimes when a teen is just beginning to dabble in drugs and hasn't demonstrated any extreme behaviors, a preventative intervention program might be all that is needed. If an at-risk teen's behavior has reached a dangerous level, various therapeutic boarding schools are an option that you will wish to examine.

What exactly are boarding schools?

A standard definition for boarding schools goes along these lines: "A boarding school is a self-contained educational total institution where students not only study but where some or all students may live."

That definition will serve the parent of a troubled teen to start out with. But though standard boarding schools do offer the structure that an out of control teen requires, a teen that is already acting out with oppositional and defiant behaviors will need more than the structure afforded by standard boarding schools.

Therapeutic boarding schools for troubled teens will keep the teen's academic work in synch with their grade level so that the transition back into public school should be seamless. But, unlike traditional boarding schools, they go beyond academics to address the emotional and psychological problems that a troubled teen needs addressed.

More Than Academics

Boarding schools for at risk adolescents build on this basic boarding school structure to encompass a wide variety of drug treatment programs and behavioral therapies as well. As you work with your therapist or counselor to determine what menu of programs best addresses your troubled teens needs, you can narrow your boarding school search to those that employ the therapeutic programs and therapies that are compatible with your teen's personality and their particular set of issues.