The clinical symptoms are listed as:
- Frequent temper tantrums
- Excessive arguing with adults
- Often questioning rules
- Active defiance and refusal to comply with adult requests and rules
- Deliberate attempts to annoy or upset people
- Blaming others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
- Often being touchy or easily annoyed by others
- Frequent anger and resentment
- Mean and hateful talking when upset
- Spiteful attitude and revenge seeking
https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Fam...
I can't speak to whether boys or girls are more frequently diagnosed with this. My guess would be boys that are more frequently diagnosed, but I'd like to emphasize the word guess; I've not done any extensive research on that aspect. We (her parents and psychiatrist) have determined that my eldest daughter hits every single symptom on the list.
It's been particularly hard to live with and we've sought out help from every available resource to learn to manage it and live with it. This will likely be an ongoing work in progress until we find a balance where the effort to manage it balances symptoms we can learn to live with, eventually as she grows and looks to leave home and start her own life, she will need to have learned to manage and control it herself. Of course, it's already been 8 years and is at least another 10 years away. It hasn't been and isn't going to be an easy path.
I often tell myself that she's just 8 and growing up with heart problems and surgery that you can't hide from her because of the slew of tests she's had to undergo her whole life to ensure her health has been harder on her psychologically than it has on all of us - and it's been hard for us, I can only begin to imagine what it was like to go through for her. So some allowances have to be made for her psychological state from this. That doesn't make it easier to deal with, it just helps you to keep putting on the mask and continuing to demonstrate a level patience that you ran out of so long ago you can't remember what it was like not to feel this way.
Realistically, everyone has their own shit to deal with and nobody really wants to be reminded that their own troubles aren't the most important things in the world - because to them, their troubles are the most important thing in their world. So you dig deep and you get on with things and hope you make it through before it spits you out of the other end a broken mess and you do the best you can with the resources you can dig up and you keep a smile on your face and keep everyone laughing because you don't want to be that guy that's always complaining about how their life sucks and the world owes them something.
Some days it's secretly really, really bleak. But other days it's openly beautiful and life couldn't be better. You have to try and focus on those days because they're the ones that pull you through the hard times.
