Ready for some more guidelines on homeschooling your ADHD’er? Here we go!
Recognize the different types of intelligence. According to an education PhD I visited with, MOST kids are NOT academic. Perhaps your kid’s a natural people person. Or kids who are nurturing. (One of my best friends is very nurturing; I especially appreciate her friendship when I’m hurting.) Here’s a link to an interesting article on multiple intelligences.
Throw out your ruler. Yeah, that thing with which you’re measuring your kid’s performance. ESPECIALLY if you’re child has special needs or learning differences. The momentum with which Standardized testing mania is spreading (thanks to No Child Left Behind,) is NOT a metric to bring into your home. What the schools are trying to quantify is a narrowly focused snapshot. If you’re kid isn’t academically inclined please don’t use this to judge their smarts.
Allow them room to fidget. Since I’m mostly talking about ADHD here, please keep this in mind. Insisting that your child “sit still” to learn something is probably shifting their entire focus from trying to learn what you want to learn…to focusing on sitting still. For these kids, sitting still while attending to a mental task is torture. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so. Some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs can’t sit still to save their lives. And a desk job would kill them.
Allow plenty of opportunity for their creativity to grow. Quit focusing so much on their sloppy handwriting(Hello? Doctors?) and focus on cultivating their natural interests and bent. Everyone will be happier.
Get out of the way! I’ve had many moms share with me their shameful secrets. It usually goes something like this: I just let Johnny play with his electronics all day and we had the best day ever! Then their face will darken and they’ll add with deep regret, But we had to get our school work done. Ugh. That never fails to pierce my heart. A child’s play IS their school work. Don’t underestimate the academic and creative power of play.
Enjoy the journey. I know you’re tired. Know the kid is driving you crazy. I know the road seems endless. But…this is not the first time you’ve heard this…the years really do fly by. (I can say that too knowing you’re out of reach from slapping me. That’s precisely what I wanted to do when parents would tell me that.)
Parenting, homeschooling, life…it’s all a journey. And homeschooling them (or not) doesn’t conclude with a report card and a “You’re Arrived.”. We journey with our kids for a season and then (hopefully) we send them off to…continue their journey.
And it’s all good!
Filed under: ADD/ADHD, education, Free Range Education, homeschooling, Individuality, parenting, PDD-NOS, Public schooling, Special Needs' Kids, The Mother Lode Project | Tagged: homeschooling kids with ADD, homeschooling kids with ADHD | Leave a Comment »
