ABSTRACT
Clinicians working with families typically encounter children who exhibit persistent and
frequent patterns of aggressive behavior resulting in significant impairment in everyday
functioning at home, at school, or both. Such children are considered unmanageable by
parents and teachers and are frequently rejected by their peer group. The term
externalizing is used in this chapter to summarize a set of negativistic behaviors that
commonly co-occur during childhood. These include noncompliance, aggression,
tantrums, and oppositional-defiant behaviors in the preschool years; classroom and
authority violations, such as lying and cheating, in school years; and violations of
community, such as shoplifting in adolescence. The labels of oppositional-defiant
disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) are used when we specifically characterize
children according to the diagnostic criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (4th ed., [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1994).
