Reference no: EM132337805

Mark is a 5-year-old boy brought in for evaluation because his behavior at school has become so disruptive. According to the parents, Mark's teacher says he just refuses to follow the rules of the classroom, openly defies her, and actually seems to try and upset his classmates. The teacher says Mark gets frustrated very easily when he cannot finish a task and is resistant to any effort to help him. This happens almost every day, and the teacher has indicated that she will not be able to keep him in the classroom if things do not change. Mark's parents admit that he has always been -willful? and difficult to manage, but as he is an only child with a stay-at-home mom, the family overlooked his disruptive tendencies and accommodated Mark. The parents report that they often skip social events and family outings because they don't know how Mark will behave. While counseling Mark's parents about the theories of causation of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), the PMHNP tells the parents that psychiatric theories include all of the following except:

A. Unresolved conflict as a fuel for aggressive behavior targeting authority figures

B. The concept that oppositionality is a reinforced, learned behavior in which the child exerts control over authority figures

C. A maladaptive response to parents' modeling of conflict avoidance as manifested by even-tempered responses to parent-toddler struggles

D. That the behavior is reinforced by increased parental attention in response to the undesirable behavior