The oppositional defiant disorder can be defined as a persistent pattern of negative, hostile, challenging, and disobedient behavior seen in the social interaction of the child with adults and authority figures in general, such as parents, relatives, grandparents, and teachers.

The main characteristics of oppositional defiant disorder are:  losing his/her temper, arguing with adults, challenging and refusing to obey requests or rules, deliberately annoying people, blaming them for his/her mistakes, and misbehaving.  The child gets annoyed easily and is often angry, irritated, resentful, spiteful, and even revengeful.

The symptoms appear in various settings, although it is in the classroom and at home, where it can be easily observed. Such symptoms cause considerable losses in the social, academic, and occupational life of the child or adolescent. It is important to observe that oppositional defiant disorder is not related to serious violations of social norms or other people’s rights, as it is with conduct disorder.

American research confers this diagnosis from 2 to 16% of school-aged children, and the disorder usually begins at the age of seven, being more common in boys than in girls.

Frequently these children present low self-esteem, little tolerance to frustration, depressive mood, episodes of rage, and very few friends, because they are often rejected by their schoolmates due to their impulsive oppositional behavior and refusal to follow social rules of the group.

School performance may be at risk and repeating grades is common. These youngsters do not participate in group activities, they refuse to ask for or accept help from teachers, and always want to solve their problems on their own.