Homeschooling & ADHD
I have been an on again, off again homeschooling parent for the last 7 years. We started homeschooling when my now 15 year old started Grade 3. He was academically doing okay with most of his marks landing in the 'B' range, if that truly matters in Grade 2, but he was struggling physically and emotionally with the school setting.
During his Grade 2 year we received a handful of diagnosis, ADHD being one of them and truly the most relevant to his life today. At that time I had been volunteering in the classroom, reading with the children and it was apparent that my busy child was like a caged animal in this environment. Up and out of his seat constantly, easily distracted by any movement or sound, pale and exhausted by the demands on his energy... he just looked ready to jump out of his own skin.
After many talks with him about what he was feeling - anxiety, overwhelm, pain (from the noise of a crazy room), and physical discomfort from having to be still so much - we decided to explore homeschooling. It really was a foreign concept to me as all I could think about was, am I making a difficult situation worse?
To answer a few questions you may have about this:
- Yes, we did ensure a healthy diet of whole foods and limited sugar and no dyes
- Yes, he is on supplements like fish oils, B complex, magnesium and probiotics (not a suggestion for others as I'm not a medical professional, this is just what we do)
- Yes, we have had numerous sleep studies and as is typical for children with an ADHD diagnosis he has irregular sleep patterns. We manage his sleep with a solid bed time and when he was young a bedtime routine. As directed by our Developmental Pediatrician he uses melatonin at night to help sleep onset. We use a minimum dosage as more is NOT better with this. We are aware that there is some conflicting information on the use of this with children and yes we have weighed this information against that of other prescribed medications for sleep and have decided this poses the least risk. Sleep is too vital to just leave it and without sleep his symptoms are exacerbated.
- Yes, we have had a recent assessment done to reconfirm the presence of ADHD in my son's life.
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Homeschooling in that first year was figuring out his needs as a learner, what his strengths were and areas of difficulty to hammer out. ADHD is a challenge of disinterest and so this first year was hands on, interactive and had very little sitting. I needed to recreate what learning was for him and be willing to let go of my expectations and receive my child right where he was.
Some interesting discoveries came to the fore front quickly. He was floating through school undetected with memory issues and was managing to compensate but it gave us an unrealistic understanding of him. He was doing well in spelling, so said the school, but when I got him home I realized he had a problem understanding how to spell. He was so clever though that he would remember the spelling list for the brief period he needed it and then it would flush out after never making it's way to long term memory. I sensed he struggled with Dysgraphia, so we had tutoring with an Orton-Gillingham tutor for a year. Without bringing him home we would have missed this from an early age and being able to help him like we did would have been lost.
Writing hurt his hand. We had to explore other ways to manage information, while building this skill. So we did A LOT of talking together about content. He is a very intelligent child, he just needs to express it using an area of strength. Without this ability to discuss content we would have lost a valuable method for receiving and learning information and build his self-esteem. We still did writing but not to the extent that he was feeling any prolonged discomfort. We did lots of fine motor activities to build this up so he could manage more with his hands as time when on.
He needed to work in sprints. 20 minutes of work and 15 minutes of activity to reignite his brain, especially for work like math which was and continues to be a challenge for him.
My child's memory is a huge challenge for him when learning uninteresting things, like math facts. Getting things into long-term memory requires deep work with the subject and tackled from multiple modes for it to be sticky. My child's memory is amazing, when he is truly interested by the subject. He is not being difficult, he has ADHD and this is to be expected.
The list goes on and on but none of this would have been understood if not for taking the risk to home educate. I know many families choose this to alleviate the stress, anxiety and struggle for their children and it is doable. What it requires is a release of our expectations of our children and receiving them where they are. Understanding how they learn best by watching for failure (and learning from it) and success (and building on it). Being flexible and trusting that your child will help you find the way. Asking questions like, "What about this is easy for you?" or "What about this is hard for you?", will help you to understand your child more and create the team environment your child needs to flourish.
School as we experienced it is not necessarily a 'bad' thing. What it is though, is one dynamic on learning that for children with ADHD may not work. These children are uniquely wired and need a 'unique to them', solution. The purpose in this all is to say, you can teach your ADHD child. You will have days of fear, frustration, or self-doubt and that is normal. Your child will make you a little insane at times but you will learn how to better manage that with practice and knowing when to throw in the towel and try again another day. It will take effort and a willingness to learn daily and to try and try again.
Without this experience I don't think my son, now finishing grade 9 in highschool, would have been so close to us and willing to communicate in an open and honest way about his struggles today. He has the willingness to keep on trying and know it will be okay as that was his model growing up as a homeschooled child. He still struggles and his Executive Function challenges are more pronounced as the demands are that much more in the higher grades. What we have though is communication and the ability to know that we can figure it out. He also has a firm belief he can do anything because we have told him that from the get go and caught it at home and made him aware of it when we saw him accomplish a difficult for him task.
So if you're considering this journey, just know, it's doable and for us it was invaluable.
