Our Inattentive ADHD Story Plus A FREE Printable Focus Cheat Sheet

Our inattentive ADHD story is an ongoing journey, if you have a child with it you know what I mean! This article is geared towards helping others who’s children have it with a free printable as well as camaraderie in knowing you are not alone! But this article is also to help people who are fearful of a diagnosis (because they suspect their child may have it) realize that an ADD or ADHD diagnosis is nothing to fear. In fact, it’s the other way around. If your child does have it and you do not find out-that is to be more feared because you’ll be lacking all the wonderful tools out there that could help your child succeed!

Our Story

Sometime around the second year of homeschooling my oldest I began to loose heart in this whole homeschooling thing. I had been trying to teach my boy for two years and it had been an uphill journey, plus he hated school (I was trying to teach him the ‘public school way’ using traditional textbooks and didn’t realize at the time there were dozens of other options).

At one point, it was nearing time to start schooling our second, my daughter, but my son still required so much help to do the smallest things and I remember feeling so dismal and thinking “I don’t know how I’m going to muster the time and patience to do this with all my kids!”

I did not want to give up though. So I started researching everything I could get my hands on that had to do with teaching. One of my favorite resources was Teaching Tips and Techniques by Weaver. That’s also when I learned about the learning styles, and I started consulting with teacher friends.

I was so blessed, God provided an elementary teacher, a middle school teacher, and another friend that had her masters in teaching (but was homeschooling), plus a substitute teacher and I picked their brains endlessly.

It didn’t take long to realize that the reason it was so difficult working with our son was because he had a processing issue (especially after I started schooling our second child and could see the stark contrasts between the two children that went beyond learning styles), so I started taking notes on our son’s learning patterns. Eventually I found a special education specialist, and after consulting with her she confirmed our son had inattentive ADHD.

I will admit I was a little surprised to learn he had this because I was one of those moms who was diligent about doing EVERYTHING right through my pregnancy and his babyhood.

The more I learned about ADHD the more I realized I had it too (I had always suspected I had it but didn’t know much about it). Later I found out from my aunt that it runs very strong in my family.

When I learned what was going on, it was as if all the pieces began to fall together and the homeschool journey a little more made sense. Once I knew what was wrong I was able to find some resources to help.

Why ADHD?

As I researched I learned that pesticide exposure can cause ADHD, and we lived in big time ag country surrounded by fields. Since our first home was so drafty I was heavily exposed during my pregnancy with our son, plus he got the most exposures during early childhood despite my efforts to protect him from it (long depressing story). We suspect this made things worse for our son, and contributed to food allergies later.

Just as a side note here for those that think ADHD is a “made up” condition, please do your research. www.amenclinics.com is a good place to start, HERE’S A LINK and a graphic below showing scans of the ADD/ADHD brain, but a google research will show you many images of normal brains vs brains with ADD/ADHD. Also, I’ve come across a couple people who think ADHD is merely a “discipline” issue, and that people that have it just need to get their “**it” together (true story).

Also, I’ve written a newer article with a ton of data, FIND IT HERE.

Finding Help

Speaking of research, I’ve done so much to find ways to help my son focus through the years! My research started inadvertently before I even had kids. In my early 20’s I worked at a health food store and my boss recommended I read a book called The Care & Feeding of Indigo Children (must have been his kind way of telling me I had ADHD). Since I’m a 1997 graduate of the School of Natural Healing and a certified master herbalist I’m always reading up on health topics to try to stay current, plus I just love reading period, so I jumped on the book.

The book was a little “out there”, but I learned things about how diet could help with ADHD. One of the things about that book that made the biggest impression on me was testimonies from kids that had ADD and were medicated for it. Their testimonies were so sad!

I want to express that if you have a child that you’ve chosen to medicate, I’m not judging you! Not in the slightest, each of us are just trying to do the best we can for our kids and ADHD is a difficult condition! But for me, when I learned my son had inattentive ADHD I knew from remembering testimonies in the aforementioned book that I didn’t care how difficult it was going to be (for me) to teach my son without medication. I would figure it out. If he wanted to do medication someday he could but it I decided I was going to let that be his choice.

So we deal with his ADHD other ways-diet and good nutrition is one of them but that is another in depth topic for another post.

The Blessing of ADHD

Everyone knows the disadvantages of having ADHD. Take my son for example, I will say it still takes my son longer to do things. There is literally nothing he does quickly.

On the flip side there are benefits to having ADHD that are seldom talked about! Many people with it find they have the ability to hyper focus on area’s of interest. These are your people that can learn something new and have it mastered in a very short amount of time.

Take my son, for example. He is the most thorough, tenacious, detailed, and diligent kid! And maybe there was a little something to that Indigo Child thing because of all my kids my oldest seems to have the strongest internal compass of right and wrong-I hardly ever have to explain concepts of right and wrong to him, most the time he just seems to intuitively know. And when he finds a new interest he has the ability to learn it FAST.

I would like to break for just a moment and say one thing about ADHD. It can seem like a curse because a person with it does have to work harder to learn many things that come easily to others, and it can make it more difficult to stay on task. It can also make it difficult if my son has to work with a teacher besides me that isn’t educated in how to teach an individual with inattentive ADHD.

But there are benefits to having it as well for those that learn to work around the disadvantages and make them work for them. There are many things I never would have been able to do in my life if I didn’t have ADHD, like mother 6 kids, homeschool, and mantain a multiple businesses all at the same time, and the same goes for my son.

For example, my son catches details that the others miss. He can also devote hours to topics that interest him and he can master them in a very short amount of time due to his ability to hyper or “over” focus (a trait that comes with being ADHD and learning to make it work for you).

But learning to make it work for you can take time, practice, and finding plus employing a few tricks. I have a chart below that I put together with a few tips and tricks we have found to help with focus. These tips are based off the research I’ve done on this topic. Feel free to print it. We printed and framed ours and it hangs above my sons desk. One thing that is not on the list that I’ve since found helps is to create rewards for our son.

For example-he has a tenancy to daydream during math lessons so to help him we told him that once he has completed 4 lessons it buys him 1 hour doing something he wants to do. This has proven to be quite effective for him.

You can find the vitamins our kids take in my Homeschool Amazon Storefront HERE.
Contact Me for the essential oils he loves most and finds effective for supporting focus-also it’s not specified on the chart but when it says “try a concentration essential oil” this means diffusing (not taking them internally).

If you print this chart please consider subscribing to my upcoming newsletters where I’ll be sharing great deals and more freebies as well as new posts notifications! I promise your information will be kept private and never shared or sold. You can read my privacy policies and disclaimers here.

Hey! Are you planning your next homeschool year or next semester? Be sure to read my post 25 Tips For How To Plan A Homeschool Year. And are you going to be schooling with a new baby or toddler? Be sure to read my post, How To Homeschool With A Baby

View all my HOMESCHOOLING POSTS HERE.

    

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• Discover 4 Tips For Homeschooling Kid’s In Multiple Grades AT THE SAME TIME
• How To Homeschool With A Baby
• How I Teach Kids With Various Learning Styles (And You Can Too)
• 25 Tips For How To Plan A Homeschool Year
• Love at Home Education Curriculum Review
• Best Effective Chore Chart System for Kids
• Discover Teaching Textbooks, A Review
• Picking The Best Homeschool Style For Your Family
• My Fathers World Homeschool Curriculum Review & Video Walkthrough
• Homeschool Room Idea’s-Create Learning Spaces
• Our Inattentive ADHD Story Plus A FREE Printable Focus Cheat Sheet

*This post contains some affiliate links. The information in this post is not intended to treat, diagnose, or claim to cure or treat any condition or disease. You can read my full Disclaimer HERE.