Homeschooling ADD Kids

After I posted a post (kind of a redundant phrase, eh?) to Twitter Moms, specifically the Mom’s of Special Needs Kids group, announcing my new unit study about dogs which went up yesterday, I received this reply from a commenter:

Nostalchick said:

Valid points made about the factory mentality of the education "system" but, what about the benefits of mainstreaming? As a mother of an HFA 9 yr old, I will tell you that the mainstream has helped him be prepared for the real world. I’ve always kind of thought that homeschooling avoids it.
There are good teachers out there and if you do your homework as a parent, you can implement specific things in your child’s IEP which is their right.
I’m just saying, we can boo hoo our schools but, it’s the world we live in and they must be prepared for that. Other great programs out there will show them other sides as well. Sports, art classes, music… all serve to teach us and our kids who they are.
Julie- CA.

Evidently she was talking about yesterday’s post which included some quotes from Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow.  Anyway, here was my reply on Twitter Moms:

Mainstreaming. Hmmmm…. I’ve never been a big fan of the mainstream. Yes, kids grow up and have to live in the real world. But is school anything like the real world? I don’t think so. Maybe in some ways it resembles the corporate world, but that’s a whole new issue.

I don’t mean to demonize the entire educational system. And it seems to work moderately well for some kids. Personally, the amazing difference in my ADD brother-in-law since starting homeschooling, both academically and socially is enough for me. And I’ve seen this in other ADD kids, too.

Any thoughts from our subscribers or visitors?  (Click on the title of this post and then scroll down to the Comment box to let us know your thoughts.)

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I’m about halfway through Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow. If you haven’t read it, it’s about transforming your business by being remarkable.  Although it’s a business book, it has some interesting things to say about schools. Here’s a quote:

"Where did you learn how to fail? If you’re like most Americans, you learned in first grade. That’s when you started figuring out that the safe thing to do was to fit in. The safe thing to do was color inside the lines, don’t ask too many questions in class, and whatever you do, be sure your homework assignment fits on the supplied piece of white card stock.

We run our schools like factories. We line kids up in straight rows, put them in batches (called grades), and work every hard to make sure there are no defective parts. Noboday standing out, falling behind, running ahead, making a ruckus.

Playing it safe. Following the rules. Those seem like the best way to avoid failure.  And in school, they may very well be. Alas, these rules set a pattern for most people (like your boss?), and that pattern is awfully dangerous. These are the rules that ulimately lead to failure."

 
So…are our ADD kids purples cows in schools full of brown cows?  Probably makes them feel kind of wacky, being purple and all. Which is what is so great about homeschooling kids with ADD. They can be as purple as they want.

What do you think?  Click on the title of this post, then scroll down to get to the Comment box.

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Today I’d like to simply provide a link to an intriguing post on another blog: Homeschooling Research Notes.  The topic is Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers.  (You might recall that he wrote the best-seller The Tipping Point.)  Although Outliers is not about homeschooling, per se, there is much in it that makes one think about homeschooling and its benefits. 

Take a look:

http://gaither.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/malcolm-gladwells-outliers-and-homeschooling-part-i/

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Have you heard about the mistreatment of children in schools using "seculsion rooms"?  They are primarily used for kids with special needs.  Just another reason to consider homeschooling.  Here’s the link to the CNN story: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/17/seclusion.rooms/index.html

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Popcorn, cotton candy, games to win stuffed animals! Well, no, it’s not really that kind of carnival, but it will be fun. Homeschooling ADD Kids is hosting a blog carnival on the 9th of this coming February.

What’s a blog carnival? It’s a list of posts from different blogs on the Web on specific topics.  They also serve as a place to connect with those who are experienced or interested in that field.

 
So, if you have a blog about homeschooling kids with learning differences of any type (or even if your blog isn’t specifically about this topic, but you have a post on your blog that addresses it) please click on the "submit an article" link below to submit your post or e-mail me at kbroccoli@homeschoolingADDkids.com .  I’ll post a link to your blog post and you’ll be part of the carnival on Feb 9!

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Would you just focus?!

If your homeschooling a kid with ADD, you’ve probably said that more than once. Here are a couple of engaging articles from the illuminatedmind blog and LifeDev blog about the benefits of why not focusing on just one thing at a time has it’s benefits:

ADD Is Your Friend or Why Distractions Are The Key To Your Success

My Father’s Take On Getting Stuff Done: 3 "Opened" Projects

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A lot of emphasis in regular schools (as well as in some homeschool curriculums) is put on testing.  But how important are tests?  Read this article on this excellent homeschooling blog: Education is About Learning, Not Testing.  The link will open in a new window.

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If you decide to create your own curriculum to use in homeschooling your child, how do you know what to teach?  And how do you know when to teach it?  In other words, what should they be learning at various ages or grade levels?

Well, here’s a link to a helpful web page (on World Book’s site) that lists what kids normally learn and during which grades they usually learn different subjects:

http://www.worldbook.com/wb/Students?curriculum

I’m not one to say that all children have to learn the same subjects at the same time, especially if a kid has ADD and you find it’s just not the time to teach a certain topic.  However, it is helpful to review the list and get a general idea of what might be taught and when.  It can also help stimulate ideas as to subjects that you might want to include in your own curriculum for your child.

Here’s an example of social studies topics that are generally taught in 4th grade:

* Types of community life
* History and development of the local state
* Relation of the state to its region, nation, and the world
* World cultures
* Reasons for our laws
* Regions of the world
* Continents
* Time zones
* Earth’s resources
* Climatic regions of the world
* Map skills: longitude, latitude, scale
* Using a globe

Hope you find it as useful as we did!

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They say that you don’t truly know something until you can teach it to someone else.  With that goal in mind, my wife and I have recently been experimenting with switching roles around and having 12-year old Steven teach us!

Of course we don’t do this with a topic he’s still learning.  Instead we wait until we’ve covered the subject rather thoroughly, then we ask him to teach it to us. 

This is a scary task for him without some guidance, so we supply him with an outline-type diagram of the main ideas on a whiteboard.  Each line is just one word, not too much info, but enough to stimulate his thinking and remind him of key points.

He’s allowed to use the whiteboard and add whatever words or drawings he wishes to.  He can also act it out or explain it verbally.   His ADD makes him a surprisingly animated, even entertaining teacher.

We don’t expect him to explain it perfectly.  He often doesn’t explain things in logical order (another trait characteristic of ADD).  And he has to stop and think a lot.  But I believe that it is then that his brain is making the needed connections.  You can almost see his mind straining to relate ideas and put them together in a way that he can explain it to us.

If he does a very poor job teaching the topic, we don’t act like anything is wrong.  Kids are tired of parents and teachers telling them to “try harder” or “come on, you know”.  Like I said at the beginning of this post, you don’t truly know something until you can teach it.  If he can’t teach it, he simply needs to learn more about it, or learn about the topic using different methods.  So we spend more time on the subject.  Not that day, but maybe the next, or the following week. 

Other times he does exceedingly well teaching a concept.  But the important thing is he proves that he has learned the subject by teaching it.  Or maybe, in some cases, it’s better to say that Steven genuinely learns at the moment that he teaches.

Try having your child teach you what he has learned.  You’ll be amazed at how much your homeschool student (or “teacher”) will remember, because he taught it to you.

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Many parents have asked my wife and I what gave us the confidence to start homeschooling Steven, despite his ADD.  I think answering this is important because it can help you, too, if you’ve ever doubted whether you can homeschool your ADD child.

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