ADHD without medication

[rsrangel]

Does anyone homeschool an ADHD child without medication? My son is 6 and a half, and is excelling in everything except reading. It is so tough to get him to stay focused on a word. I can make it fun, but regardless he has to practice reading to learn how to read, and getting him to look at the word and think at the same time is tough. Him reading sentences is nightmare.

[QueenCreole313]

BUMP

[Boobah]

Have you tried chiropractic, cutting out artificial dyes, sugar, etc? It has helped my nephew tremendously!! Especially red dye #40 and blue something

[LilrockerMama]

My son is 8 and ADHD, which is sort of the reason we pulled him out of school. He was on medication and they changed it and it made him sleep all day, but without it he was too much of a distraction. Super frustrating! So anyways he was on Intuniv, we had amazing results with that. But then his insurance changed and they switched it to the generic and as crazy at it seems, it made him sleep all day long. But half of one wasn't enough.

Long story short, right now we are trying without the meds and it is definitely a challenge. I'm JUST starting homeschooling so I can't give much advice but what I'm trying to do is give frequent breaks so he can get his energy out, concentrate for a minute
(Sometimes literally) then so on.. But if you want to try meds I would definitely recommend Intuniv, it's not like Ritalin or anything it's actually a blood pressure med found to help ADHD children and it does not affect their blood pressure. It worked really well until we switched to the generic. I'm sure we will eventually get him back on it, but I want to at least say I tried without meds.

[romacox]

1 srangel, My children are all grown, but I still tutor (many with ADHD grades K through 6Th/  no medications needed), and give home school workshops.  Because my method is so successful, I am now invited to give workshops to teachers at the University Of North Florida on how to help children learn to read. 

The first thing I do is ask them how they pronounce the following phonic sounds:  B,C,D,G,H,J,K,M,P,T,W.  Nine times out of ten, if the child knows their phonic sounds, but is having trouble blending them to form words it is because they are pronouncing one or more of these sounds incorrectly.  For example if they pronounce D as Du they will sound out daddy as du-a-du-y. If they pronounce H as Hu, and P as Pu they will sound out happy as hu-a-pu-y which does little to help them decode properly..  The following video explains more:

I have also found that the public schools use left brain teaching  that does not work for all children.  By physically involving the children in the learning process, one can effectively teach to all the learning styles.  It is known as whole brain teaching.  For more information on how to teach reading using this method, see this website.