30. Working With ADHD Instead of Against It: Our Words of Advice

• early ADHD signs we notice first, especially screen hyperfocus and the crash afterward 
• why teachers see a people pleaser while we see meltdowns at home 
• low frustration tolerance with hard skills like reading, swimming, biking, and tying shoes 
• our medication conversations, including appetite and growth concerns 
• natural supports we try first, including cutting dyes, lowering sugar, omega-3s, focus drops, and a balanced breakfast 
• why daily movement is non-negotiable and how we build indoor and outdoor outlets 
• how maturity changes symptoms and why time matters 
• reframing ADHD as hyperfocus and helping kids find their “superpower” interests 
• why homeschooling reduces stress and increases success for her 
• the curriculum choices we like and why pencil and paper matters 
• teaching responsibility with planners, routines, and reminders instead of removing demands 

ADHD podcast episode I recommend to everyone 

ADHD Supplements and tools we use

Transcript

Breakfast And ADHD Hook

SPEAKER_00 0:00

How much ADHD symptoms can improve if you just start the day with a really great breakfast. So not cereal, not anything super sugary, but just like a protein, carbs, a whole balanced breakfast will actually improve symptoms significantly. And we have seen that. Like we're two full-time working parents who just made a crazy decision.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

After four years in public school, we're homeschooling our three kids and documenting the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Never in a million years did I think we would be homeschool people.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Welcome to, well, this wasn't the plan podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

I'm Slate.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

We says Scott when I say so. I'm Sailor, and this whole podcast was my idea. This podcast is our real-time journey, unexpectedly juggling homeschool, jobs, parenting, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Follow along each week as we document how it's going and share the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because we know some days are going to be ugly, and we're not holding back.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

We're learning to expect the unexpected. So let's get into it.

Injury Recovery And Tax Season Guilt

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Let's go! Carson's back with us again finally.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Here I am.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

He's back. I don't know if he's all here, but he's back.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Parts of me are all here. The brain, maybe not so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

It's been a rough week, I would say. Just almost getting to the end of tax season. It's what we expect. But I've had a really rough week, but it is improving because I'm now off my crutches, and I feel like yesterday was like the best day I've had in a long time. Just because I got to clean off the porch and I got to do something like physical other than not be at my desk. So it's crazy how much like physical movement really impacts your like mental health.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah, and she is walking. It's a miracle.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

I know I'm walking, and I definitely have like a little bit of a limp, but it's does it doesn't hurt. So I'm just like so glad that that chapter's over. I get to start PT next week, and I don't know if I'll be skiing ever again just because I'm scared of doing that to my leg again.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yeah, maybe not around the kids.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Definitely. Which maybe they're like scared of it now because plate feels so bad about running into me. So I don't know. We'll see. But I'm so glad to be able to get up and around and outside and everything now. So so nice. And also I always feel good when we hit this time of year because we're so close to our deadline. And every year I feel like a little bit guilty because we don't get to spend that much time with the kids. This has been since they were young. We just don't get to see them as much in tax season. And I thought it would be different now that we're homeschooling, but it still feels the same because they're so good about like occupying themselves. We've been able to work a lot. And I didn't know if that was the case, so I'm glad. But then I also feel guilty again because you know, in the afternoons we usually do stuff with them, and Slate will ask me, like, Do you want to play a board game with me? And I'm like, No, but I have to work. And they're like, Man, can't wait till tax season's over. So even though they're with us all day, every day right now, or just working so many hours, I still feel guilty.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

But compared to when they were in school and we had to work those hours and they get home from school, all they want to do is hang out with us and we have more work to do. You know, now we we do still take that time and school them for two hours. So we're with them, you know, it's it's probably not fun time to them, but it is quality time to me because we're seeing them learn and grow, and so we're not missing as much.

Why We Share Sailor’s ADHD Story

Early Signs And Screen Trance

SPEAKER_00 4:01

It's definitely much, much better than it was when they were in school. It just surprised me that I still have like this guilt because we're with them 24-7, but we're just working a lot of it. So let's get in today's episode. This was a much requested episode about ADHD and just about our story with Sailor's ADHD, because I think so many people are going through what we went through, so they want to hear what it was like for us. So today we're just gonna tell that story. Hopefully, this is helpful to a lot of you. In case we haven't mentioned it before, Sailor was born prematurely at 34 weeks. And I just say this because that ADHD is much higher in premature babies. So she was born prematurely, and people always want to know like when we started noticing. I think it was much easier for us because she has a lot of cousins her exact same age, or what even within a couple weeks or months of her. So it was really easy for us to see like the difference between her cousins and her. I think maybe if you don't have a lot of kids around, you wouldn't know any different, especially if it's your first kid. And it was our first, so a lot of these things like were so much different with our other two, but we just didn't know. And one of the things I think that was much different, but we didn't notice was when she watched TV. I feel like it's like a telltale sign. It doesn't necessarily mean they have ADHD, but it definitely has been the case for so many people I've talked to also. When she would watch a cartoon when she was little, she literally would not move. It was like she was in a trance.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

It it is a common thing among people with ADHD. I mean, you could go by and bang cymbals together and she wouldn't look away. She would lean closer to the TV to make sure she could hear, but that's it. Yeah. The other kids, they would look over like, what are you doing? What's going on? But I I don't know, almost nothing can break that trance whenever whenever she's locked in.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

And even grandparents would comment on it because if they had all the grandkids over, they might turn on a show, Bubble Guppies or Mickey Mouse or something for them. And Sailor was the only one that wouldn't move.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Which, if you have a kid that has ADHD when there's not a TV on, they're at a young age they can be even more difficult to handle because they're even you know more energetic and whatever. And so it does make it tempting to just be like, oh, well, like I turned that TV on and they'll they'll sit there and watch forever.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

I mean, for she would have sit there for as long as it was on. If it was on eight hours, she would sit there for eight hours.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

They don't know they need to eat, they don't know they need to go to the bathroom. I mean, they are locked in.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

And if that happened, like let's say she went to a grandparent's house and they went over that like few hour mark and they just let her because she was being happy. When it turned off and she was out of that trance, she was awful, like crazy.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Like she would cry about everything, she'd be so angry. Anger. It's just I mean, it's it's what would happen to us if we watched TV for eight hours and then we had to, you know, be expected to do something.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Well, I mean, we probably wouldn't throw a temper tantrum like she did. Like she was so angry, but it definitely would make us feel awful.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

That's how we would feel on the inside, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Absolutely. So we that's kind of where where it all started for us. And we also, you know, we don't do TV in the mornings now, we don't do like iPad time or anything like that. And that's really where it all started. It stemmed from this, because we had this ADHD child that it super impacted, and we could see it. Finally, we could see the pattern of if we put on a show, even if it was like like after nap time, sometimes we would, it just started becoming a problem no matter when she would watch. Even if it was for 30 minutes or whatever, it was a problem.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

And for other people, you know, if if they're not struggling with ADHD, they they could have their kid watch the 30 minutes a day or whatever at any point of the day, it doesn't really matter, but it doesn't work for and we should have known because I have ADHD to some extent, and I have that same issue. I had already learned that I can't watch until I'm done with everything I'm gonna do for the day. And it's not just like, oh, I'm so responsible. I'm gonna take care of all the things first and then enjoy myself. That's not why. It's because once I've watched, I'm done for the day. I it's not that I don't want to, I can't do anything after that. My brain won't function properly.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Actually, one of the doctors that I followed, Dr. Eamon, he posted about that yesterday, about it being hereditary. And he said if he doesn't see another person in the family with ADHD, he just assumes that the child had like a head trauma. So it is that apparent, like that I know now that you have ADHD. And I should have known it when I met you because you and Saylor are very similar, but it just wasn't as big of a thing. And I think the biggest part with ADHD and kids often is their behavior, and so we were seeing all these behavior issues at home, and we were starting to correct a lot of them, like no TV in the mornings and things like that. But then when she would go to like Mother's Day Out and those little things, she didn't have a behavior issue as far as the teachers like telling us she was being bad or anything.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Right. And that that's one of those things that you you just have to keep an eye out, and a lot of people won't notice it, especially if your kid's smart, not even necessarily gifted, just a smart kid, because you know they'll start school and they're doing well, and it's because their brain's working so fast that they're still doing the problems. And it's not that they focused on the the first problem and then the next problem, the next problem. That's not how the ADHD brain works. If you don't have it, you probably don't understand. But they solved the first problem so fast while they were writing it, they thought of 10 other things, and then they looked at the second problem and solved it, and then thought of 10 things while they were writing the answer. It's when they get to more difficult things, long division, things that take multiple steps to solve a single problem that they start really struggling, and that's when the teachers notice. But but we already had noticed.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah, I think as parents, you're gonna be the first to notice. My family did start noticing, but may mainly just her high energy. Not, you know, people might not notice the focus if they're not around them a lot, like you are as parents. But my sister might have her, and she's like, Oh my gosh, that girl can talk. Like, and that's one thing that once again I thought was normal. Like she would wake up and she would be on level a hundred thousand from the minute her eyes were open. But that was our first kid. I just thought that's how kids were. And so we were active all the time. We went all day. We were outside, we never stopped because we got on her level. Well, now having two other kids, I realized, huh, that's not really how all kids are. They don't wake up with all of this energy that they don't know what to do with.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

I thought I thought it was normal too, and I played into it because I I have a lot of energy myself. And so the second she got up, she's like, let's play keepy upie with the balloon. Now let's go outside and jump on the trampoline, now let's do this, now let's do that. And there was never a downtime really. It was just like go, go, go.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

And that's another thing. I I'm glad you brought that up because people always ask me, like, what did we notice? So another thing was that, and she still is like this, she has a hard time staying on one task, but with playing. So if we set up like the bounce house for them outside, she would go play with it, and then I don't know, a couple minutes later, she'd be like, Hey guys, you want to swing now? And then she'd be like, Hey guys, you wanna jump on the tramplane? Like, she is switching task all the time, whereas the other two would play on that first bounce house, you know, for hours or whatever. It was really Sailor that was the one that was like bouncing from thing to thing, and we had to be like, No, like if you ask us to blow up the bounce house, you are gonna play on it longer than two minutes.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah, for sure.

School Looks Fine Then It Doesn’t

SPEAKER_00 12:38

So that's definitely something that we also now realize as part of ADHD, and that's something that people have also said with their kids that they've noticed, but yeah, they just kind of bounce around from one thing to the next, and it's just hard for them to like hold their attention on that one thing. So I guess the next thing was that she did go to school. So when I was originally saying she was fine in school, I was talking about like Mother's Day out, and then she did daycare and pre-K. And we always asked, like, we asked her pre-K teacher, like, Do you think she has ADHD? And the teacher's like, No, no, I think she's fine. And Sailor, if you know her, her personality is that she is a people pleaser, like she wants everyone to love her, everyone does love her, and she doesn't want to be in trouble, like she does not want to be on a teacher's bad side, so she always got really good behavior reports from all of her teachers. And when she started kindergarten, we asked the same thing like, Do you think she she's good? Like, this is what we're seeing at home. We could not get her to sit still to like read or like for a book or anything. She was falling out of her chair, she like her frustration tolerance is so low, always has been. Like, and that we saw with riding a bike, learning to swim, tying her shoes, tying her shoes, and what I mean like I'm like, let's just sit down and tie her shoe because in kindergarten they were working on that. It landed in her in tears, screaming, yelling at me, throwing her shoe, and she really yeah, we always tell her that, but she really only acted like that when she was frustrated and something was difficult. Like she just really couldn't focus on something long enough. And she, if we were telling her, okay, like first step is this, second step is this, she would always say, I can't remember all of that. That's too many things for me to remember at once. How can you expect me to do all of them? Once again, totally thought that was normal until we had two other kids where it was so easy to teach them to tie a shoe or to swim or anything like that. And we had a lot of issues with that, with her wanting to give up on things that were kind of hard. Like she wanted to give up swimming. She told us that she would wear a puddle jumper for life. She also wanted to never learn how to ride a bike. She learned very late because it just ended in tears and her being very frustrated.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

And there are ways to cope with all that. I mean, the first thing is, you know, when she got to back hand springs in gymnastics, for example, she wanted to quit. And I was tempted to let her because she was screaming and crying every day.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Well, let's just back up a little bit. She was screaming and crying because one, she got she got hurt once, and it was not that big of a deal. But then when she went back, she was a little scared, and she just really couldn't do it because I think she was scared. And so it was hard again. And she's like, Nope, ready to quit.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Well, and Taryn was like, You can quit after you get this down, and if you still want to quit after that, I don't think you're gonna want to quit, but if you want to after that, then you can, but not before, because we don't we don't quit because things get hard. And and that was hard for me because she was really upset about it. But but that lasted months. Taryn was right, she she got through it, it did take months, and now she can do you know, three back handsprings and a back flip in a row, and things like that. So she's she's done really well. But it still shows up even in in the schoolwork. Like she doesn't throw a fit about it anymore. She just struggles with multi-step instructions. So it's stuff she all she knows all of it, though. There's there's four sentences, and the instructions say underline the preposition, circle the linking verb, uh add a comma if you need one because there's more than four words before the in the prepositional phrase, and then I don't there was one other thing. There were four steps in all of them. And I just had to tell her, I was like, look, when you see that, your brain shuts down because there's too many instructions. What you need to do is don't look at it as four sentences, look at it as sixteen problems, and you're gonna solve all sixteen one at a time, and and that fixed it, and then she could do it. But she just looked at it and she was like, I didn't understand the instructions. Like, yes, you do. Read the first sentence and then do that, and then read the second sentence and do that. That's all you have to do. So, but but it is hard. I mean, it's it's still a struggle.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

And I think that that's why this episode is so important to see like the timeline of everything and see how it was then versus how it is now. So in kindergarten, we didn't know that the girl could read. We were at the end of kindergarten and we're like, man, I just she still can't read. And her her teacher laughed at us and said, She can read, but we could not get her to read for us.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

She would fake it, she was pretending like she couldn't.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

I don't think she was faking it. I think that by the time she came home from school, she was done. You know, she's not gonna read for us. And so, you know, she would I would be like, just read this one page. And it was like, the cat is fat, you know, and that would just end in tears. And so I just was like, oh well, school will teach her to read because I definitely cannot help her and don't want to fight with her after school. So she went to first grade and she had a little bit of a rough first grade year, but she kind of coasted her grades, were fine, behavior was fine. But at the end of the year, they did say, you know, she's behind on her reading. And I was like, oh my gosh, like, but once again, reading is really hard. It is, you need a lot of frustration tolerance because all of these grammar rules and being really bad at it, like it's it's a skill that takes quite a long time to perfect. And that was just something that was hard for her to sit still and actually read. So that was first grade, second grade. She had a phenomenal teacher. She absolutely loved school, she was doing well, but we really like cracked down on reading more. So I think she got over that hump once we told once we were told she was behind. Over the summer, we worked on it a lot. We worked on it a lot. We book we bought like, I don't know, so many books because we wanted to find something that would keep her interest. And we finally did enough to where she did start reading. But they also introduced in second grade the accelerated reader. Yeah, the AR program at school, which was the best thing ever for Sailor because it really motivated her to read at school. And actually that year she she had the highest AR points in her grade and in the school.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Yes, yeah. In second grade, she beat all the other kids in the school, and then again in third grade, she did it again.

Medication Questions And Hard Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_00 19:41

So she had a phenomenal second grade year, but in second grade we actually were having a lot more problems with her at home. That was the first time that I was really, really considering medication, and I remember like talking to you about it and being like, I've been doing more research, I think it might be helpful for her to get on medication, and we just had like a lot of talks about it because we've always been kind of like not wanting her to be on a medication, hopefully we could figure this out without a prescription because we she does have some friends on it. There's obviously a lot of downsides of it, but second grade was really the time where I was like, I don't know. And it was mainly because she was so terrible after school, like absolutely terrible, and it was like she would just come home and explode. And then the rest of the time we were spending with her was mainly like sports and activities, and that was to the point where she really couldn't concentrate on a game the entire time. Like if she was playing volleyball, it was really hard for her to concentrate on the ball the whole time. And so that and then her behavior issues, she was getting in trouble all the time at home. And, you know, I was doing all this research and I was just seeing how it really impacts our self-esteem if they're always in trouble. Even her brother was saying, Yeah, Sailor gets in trouble all the time. And that was like, to me, I was like, Oh my gosh, like we have to do something. It can't be like this. She can't be the one that's always corrected, always in trouble, and we're always on her butt. Like, we can't. So super, super considered medication for weeks. Was researching it. I sat down with a couple other moms and talked to them about their experiences, and then I think we both still were like, no, not a good fit. And I think the biggest thing for us was just that she was preamy, she's always been tiny, and we did not want to affect her appetite. And we had like our nanny, and she was telling us, like, just if you want her to continue eating normally, just don't like try something else first. And so I think that's was like the driving force.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

That that was part of it. And then the other part was that she was making straight days in school and all of her teachers liked her. And so we're like, we kind of felt like, okay, if we do it, we're only doing it for our convenience because she's not having trouble at school.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

So well, and her convenience too, just I think it was like the behavior at home. We wanted her to feel like she wasn't always in trouble, you know, and she was getting in trouble at home. And though she had great grades at school, she hadn't grown any. Like she started kindergarten and she kind of coasted. She hadn't learned anything like on her growth sheets. She just kind of was there. So as parents, we were like, that's alarming. But as the school, like she knew what she needed to know, so they weren't concerned with it. Right. But we could see that she was not doing what she, you know, she was not doing her best. She was skipping problems, she just wouldn't do the work, like things like that. Like as parents, we could see that.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

That's what she would get so many 80s, and I'd be like, Well, you got all the questions that you answered, right? So but yeah. But you skipped about half of them.

Diet Supplements And Better Mornings

SPEAKER_00 23:08

So So instead of doing that, because we felt like the motivation to do it just wasn't where it needed to be. It was like coming a little bit selfishly. So we were like, what else can we do? And I learned on those podcasts other things you could try. So that's when we really went all in on the other things that can really affect ADHD and impact symptoms and all of that. So that's when we we leaned into that. So we started giving her daily focus drops, which is just organic vitamins and adaptogens in there. And we gave her those every single morning, and then we would give them again like before sports. And it truly made a difference. Definitely. We also started doing like a high-quality omega that's supposed to be great for the brain, great for ADHD. We had not been doing that in the past, so we started doing that.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Cut out, of course, red dyes and processed sugars and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yes, definitely keying in her on her diet. And we always could see like if my mom or sister would take her to Sonic and get a slushie, that kid acted like an insane person. And so huge hits of sugar like that, not good. If you want symptoms to be controlled naturally, you know, you gotta eliminate the juice, any sodas, teas, drinkable sugar, not good. Also, I just saw on a podcast, or I just heard on a podcast about how much ADHD symptoms can improve if you just start the day with a really great breakfast. So not cereal, not anything super sugary, but just like a protein, carbs, a whole balanced breakfast will actually improve symptoms significantly. And we've seen that. Like it's not just fluff, it absolutely helps ADHD.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

So all of that is to say that those are things you can try before you go to medication. Some people, I mean, ADHD isn't a yes or no, it's it's a severity thing. So some people have it way worse than others, and some people are gonna have to go the route of medication. We haven't yet. So, you know, we've been lucky. But you should try all those things first. I feel like if you don't at least try those things first, it's the same thing as like, you know, my kid has hypotonia, he has he has low muscle tone, let's put him in a wheelchair. That's I mean, that's the same thing. And they somebody might need a wheelchair, and if they do, thank God they have them. And I feel the same way about the medication, but you should try everything else first.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

And I think that is a point that all doctors are trying to make and teachers and everything, not that we're anti-medication, but we have to try the other things first. We can't just go straight to the easy fix. And we were guilty of wanting this, too.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yeah, yeah. And by the way, you said doctors, some doctors, because there's oh, so many doctors, GPs and you know, everything like that, that you go in there and they know that you want the medicine, they're gonna give you the medicine. And they don't, they don't it just and then everyone thinks, well, the doctor prescribed it, so they must need it. That's definitely not the case.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

No, I'm really specifically talking about the people that are coming out talking about how big of a problem this is.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Yeah, I I don't even honestly, I don't think that GPs and pediatricians should be allowed to write ADHD medication things. I think there should be specialists that actually, you know, are are required to analyze them and then they're I don't know if they're pediatric neurologists or some other kind of subspecialty that they create, but that that they actually analyze kids properly to make sure that they really need it, not just like, you know, parents want it.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Like you can get a formal testing for ADHD and it requires like observation, it's hours and hours long, it it costs like$10,000. So most people aren't doing that. Like we didn't do that. We went through the other checklist with her doctor and talked about all these things and like oh yeah, she has ADHD. So, no, I don't think that if you go through that with your doctor, get the diagnosis and then go straight to medication because all of the other elements in their life have not been looked at, too. Even sleep, getting very little sleep or getting way too much time on the screen can give you ADHD symptoms. So, or having a shit ton of sugar, like that also can do it. So we definitely need to look at more than just, oh, they check off this list. Try these other things before jumping to the medication.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

But it then if you have to, then you do. I mean, if if you've cut out refined sugars and dyes and that you've tried, you know, organic supplements that are supposed to help, and you've done all these things and you've taken away screen time and they can't do it. I mean, they're better off with the medicine if that gets somewhere they need to get, you know, struggling their whole life and feeling like a failure. You know, you don't want you don't want that either.

Movement Outlets And Growing Maturity

SPEAKER_00 28:08

So absolutely not. Another thing though that we did that I think we haven't brought up yet is just that I always say we had to make the decision to be an active family, not a couch family because of Sailor. Like we have to kind of get on her level and we had to give her a lot of opportunities every single day to get outside out. I almost used to feel like we had like a Jack Russell Terrier and we had to like make sure to get it outside and get it, or we would pay the price because it would just be absolutely hell at the end of the day if we didn't have like an active day. So you absolutely have to give them ways to burn that energy. And it's looked a lot different now that she's older. She's almost 11 and it's different. But when she was younger, you know, we had to physically be there helping her burn the energy. Let's go for a walk, let's, you know, go to the park, let's go do this. We had to physically do this. But as she's got older, we can give her tools that she can use herself. One of her favorite things is going on the trampoline and burning energy. We started talking to her like that. Like she knows she has ADHD. We talk about it. It is not like something that is like it's not bad at our house, I guess. It's just something like, oh, you need glasses, you know, you have ADHD. So when we started talking about it, one of her doctors told me to get her in on the conversation and ask her, like, are you feeling crazy inside? And she said, just however she can understand the feeling, you guys need to know, and she needs to know, and then you need to give her options. What can she do? So that's been a lot of trampoline, jump rope. She has to skip it, she has a pogo stick. She needs ways to burn energy inside too. So inside and outside options for her. And that really made a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

They do have, we do have a next playground, and we also have soft basketballs. They bounce almost like a real basketball, but they're soft. They're like foam. And so they can dribble those inside. So those are two things you can do inside to burn energy too.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

The next playground is awesome. It's just an active video game system. It's perfect for those days that they really can't get outside. It really does burn a ton of energy, which her friend that has an ADHD, she likes roller skates inside all the time. Like, so you have to give them an outlet. I think that as adults, sometimes we don't need to burn all the energy. We need more energy. So we don't think of it like that. We we needed to like change the way we were thinking and realize that we had to give her plenty of options that she could choose when she felt like, oh my gosh, like I'm going crazy. And sometimes we'll say, like, oh girl, like you need to go outside and get some of that energy out. And she's old enough now that she's like, okay, like I I get it. But another thing that now looking back is that she's just better at managing it herself. I feel like we've given her plenty of tools, and that combined with her being older, has just been like a game changer.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Oh, yeah. She, I mean, it's a lot better now.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

So, so much better. Not that she doesn't have ADHD anymore. She absolutely does. It's just that her maturity was a huge thing in it too. Just like a toddler cannot control their emotions if they're mad about a fork. Kids cannot control their ADHD energy if they have that high energy until they get to a certain age where they can start controlling it a little bit better and a little bit better. And it got a little bit better as we went on, but now it's just like so much better. And I shared this on my Instagram, and a teacher actually messaged me and she said, I'm so glad you said this because a lot of times in the school system, we're pushing medication so that the kids can behave and we can, you know, have quiet in the classroom and all of this, and they can like conform to the schedule. But she said, a lot of times I just urge the parents to give it some time because with maturity, a lot of times they will thrive. It's it's just kind of like having anything else in your life that you may have to accommodate for, that you may have to do things a little bit differently than other people, and she absolutely does, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Yeah, yeah, they they just find a way, and some people say that ADHD by itself is like a superpower.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

It is it is a superpower, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

I mean, and it if you use it properly, it really can be. You can think of it that way, and I think that helps.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

You should think of it that way. I always thought that she couldn't focus. Like ADHD means you can't focus. I was absolutely wrong. They can focus extremely like when she was watching the television, she can have that crazy amount of focus on something that she truly loves. And that is the superpower. The thing is, you have they have to be old enough for you to figure out what it is that they're super passionate about so that they can super focus on those. And so what happens with that is if you find that, you found an activity that they can do inside that isn't them running and jumping around that that that is them being quiet and working on something that they love. And we found a lot of things like that with Sailor for her art and drawing, she could like sit and color for a long time when she was a kid. But now that's like more mature things, like she does like hand lettering and she does sketching and all of these things, so you can absolutely find that. Like our nephew can literally sit there for hours and do Legos. There's just so many things that you just have to figure out what they're super like passionate about, and they will be able to focus on it like nobody's business. Like it's actually really crazy to watch.

Why Homeschool Fits Her Brain

SPEAKER_01 34:16

So, how does all this tie into homeschooling? Well, she was doing great in school and then she got into third grade. I mean, she still did well. She was number one accelerated reader, she was still making straight A's, but she hated it there. And I think it was because, you know, as they get older, there's less recess, there's less PE, there's less, you know, fun activities in the classroom, and a lot more focus on the curriculum, which that's not the teacher's fault, really. I mean, it's things need to get more intense, they need to dial it up, plus they have to start getting them ready for that dang test. So they spend a lot of time on math, history, reading, you know, mostly math and reading so that they can pass the test. Well, she just hated hated it because she feels like she's trapped and she's there for eight hours. So that's when she started asking to be homeschooled.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Yeah, I was very surprised when she started hating school because of her high energy. She really does thrive in social settings. She's always loved school to the point where on weekends she would be like, Oh man, I wish I could go to school and see my friends. So she went from absolutely loving it, it being one of the best things for her, to hating it, begging every single day to not go to school. And so it was a huge red flag. But when I would ask her, she didn't give me a direct answer. That was the hard part. She would just be like, I don't know, like we just do worksheets all day. I just I hate it. I don't I want to go. We we do the same thing every day. And so we just kind of had to assume and be like, ask her questions like, is it because you're not getting outside much? Is it because you know you're bored or whatever? So I think over the course of the year we really did confirm that it's what Carson said. It was just they were in the chair all day. A lot of times her class was not a very good class in third grade, so they got recess taken away sometimes two times a week. So they really were just not getting that energy out, and she just did not thrive with that.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

And the worksheets themselves, she had gone from where you know she could do in one giant ADHD burst, get all the problems knocked out for whatever attention span she could muster, and then she would have all this free time to do whatever she felt like draw, color, read, whatever, usually art. But you know, things get a little bit more complex, and so she can do all the problems, but she was finding that you know, to get them all done, she she would probably do some and then zone out for a while, then do some and zone out for a while, and she would get them all done, but then that was it. She was one of the last ones done, and then it's like, okay, we got to move on to the next worksheet. So it's she I think she felt like her reward for finishing the worksheet was another worksheet.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Yeah, she couldn't just get it done quickly, and so her attention span just wasn't there for as much as they were doing, and she just started growing to hate school. So that's when we started looking into homeschool, and we've talked about our story a lot there, but let's fast forward to us actually homeschooling, and we're like, okay, we're gonna try it out, and it's just been the best thing for her. I just think that the school environment was not set up for kids with ADHD.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

No, she's loving it because she only has to do it for two hours, and you know, you get rewarded a lot of times for being able to learn the stuff and get it done in a timely manner. The reward is you don't have to keep learning the same thing. You can move on to the next thing. So, I mean, even the tests are set up that way. It's like if you if you miss this problem, then the next day you have to do this problem. If you get all of these problems right, the next day you don't have to do any problems. So when you do the tests. So I think that's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah, the way that our curriculum works is that one, it's on pen and paper, which is the best setup for someone with ADHD, but it's a spiral method. So they will introduce a new concept every single day, and it'll be something short, like, oh, today we're gonna do you know, two digits with this instead of one. So very short lesson, they go through the lesson and then they do a short assessment, and so they spiral back to everything uh over and over. So all you know, year long in the book, you're spiraling back to something. So you get a lot of exposure to it a little at a time. So that is like one of the best things, I think, for her is that we're not just working on a concept for a few weeks and then moving to the next.

Responsibility Without Lowering Standards

SPEAKER_01 38:46

And you know, I like statistics, so let me hit y'all with some statistics. If you're bored by statistics, I'll try to make it quick. I I like to see the numbers, so it's not just this is our opinion, you know, this these are facts. Handwriting, instead of, you know, typing or clicking on the computer to learn things, it's been proven that it improves the memory and visualization and deep understanding of whatever you're learning. So if you're learning math, you're you're not just going to memorize and forget. If you're doing it on pencil and paper, you're just way more likely to retain it and understand it on a deeper level, which is so important when you go to the next concept. Because if you just memorize how to kind of do it, but you don't really understand it, then when you go to the next concept, then it's not going to make sense. The deeper processing, the memorization, that's a big part of it. Now, let me play devil's advocate on the other side. You might hit me with people say that ADHD kids, you know, they have trouble with handwriting and it's very frustrating for them. It can make it more difficult to learn because of that frustration. I don't I don't think that's true. It's more difficult to write, yes, it's harder and more frustrating for them, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Once you actually do it, it still has that cognitive benefit. That's what all the studies show. You just have to fight through that until they get the hang of it.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Well, that's the biggest thing is that some lady messaged me and she basically said, Well, she has a disability. Why are you having her do X, Y, and Z? And I think at the point she was talking about like them having like a morning routine where they like do a chore and they do some things on their own. And I was like, no, lady, like this is the point I'm trying to make. It is not a disability. We cannot have her not write just because it's hard. We can't have her not swim just because it's hard. We have to give her tools to make it work for her, to make life work for her. She might not do it the same, and the path to get there might not be the same as someone, but we still have to create a functioning adult at the end of this. And that means giving her tasks. That means giving her responsibility. But for her, that means she writes it down, she sets reminders, she might need a visual aid, she needs more practice, but she has to be able to live in the real world.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Yeah, and it's just like anything. I I go back to a similar example that I gave earlier. If if your kid has some kind of physical limitation, if it forces them, if it's absolutely impossible for them to walk, of course you're gonna put them in a wheelchair. But if they can do it, it's just harder for them, it's a struggle. Are you gonna just be like, well, it's a struggle for them? I'm gonna carry them everywhere or put or put them in a wheelchair. No, you're gonna be like, no, fight. It's gonna take you twice as long to learn, but you're gonna be glad that you can do it, you know? So it's the same thing with the ADHD. If they have some kind of mental disability that completely prevents them from learning how to read and write, that's a different thing. But just because it's gonna be harder for them doesn't mean that they shouldn't do it.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Yeah, absolutely feel like you're doing them a huge disservice if you treat them differently in the fact that, oh, just because you have ADHD means you can't do this. No, it means it is more difficult for them. So give them a little bit more grace, absolutely, but work together to find something that helps make it work. Because once it clicks for them, just like anything, when you do it the first time, it's really hard. But after you've been doing it for a few years, you don't think about it. That still applies to ADHD. Like she can ride her bike now, she can tie her chute, she can write. And her writing is getting so much better and it's easy. And now she actually writes for enjoyment. She's been writing in her journal, she's been creating stories, things that we didn't ask her to do. So you have to look at how we can get over the hump because you you have to.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

And you can make accommodations that helps them learn better, but you can't make accommodations just to make things easier. It's like some of these liberal arts colleges that if you have ADHD and you get a note signed by a doctor, they'll give you four hours for a test that everyone else gets one hour for. And I don't, you know, I just don't agree with that. I'm sorry, but they're putting their stamp of approval on a person and sending them out into the world saying this person has qualified and somebody hires them based on that. And okay, if you're a freelance writer, maybe that's fine because if you spend four hours on something that should have taken one hour, you get paid the same. But if you're an accountant, for example, they put you out into the world saying this person can do this, and then they come to find out, yes, but it takes you four times as long. Time is money, you can't do the job, you know?

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Absolutely. I think that you have to get to the same place where most people are, it just might be different getting there. And someone had told me that with having them sit and focus, like she's not focusing for two hours at a time now. Like she is doing school for two hours, but she's not fully focused for two hours. Well, as she gets older, she's getting into junior high and high school. She has to slowly build up that focus time. She has to be able to sit and focus on things longer as she gets older. And that's what we're building up to. We're not just saying, oh, she has ADHD, she can't do that. No, she can. It just looks differently getting there.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

And as a person with ADHD, I will say that, you know, you will train your brain, you'll force yourself to be able to do that if for no other reason than that if I don't focus, this thing that is boring me that I don't want to do is going to take five hours when it could take two. And I want to get it done so I can go do the thing I really want to do.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

Yeah, and you have found ways to focus and you are a successful, happy adult. You do not need medication and you do things differently than other people. I also do things differently than other people based on my preferences and my skills and my downfalls that I have. Like everyone just everyone does things the way that it works for them. We just don't always like acknowledge that, I guess. And with ADHD, I think that's the biggest advice that I could give is that you shouldn't not give your kids responsibilities just because they have ADHD. You should still just help them figure out ways to make it work. For Sailor, that's a planner. It's her Alexa giving her reminders. It's doing routines every day, it's getting enough sleep so that she can focus. It's getting enough time outside. All of those things are going to be part of her life forever, not just now. And she also knows if she has a ton of sugar or she has a meal like that, she's not gonna be able to focus as well. She's gonna feel differently. All of those things are tools that she has to use forever, not just now. So I think homeschooling has absolutely been the best thing for us at the end of our story here. She's about to be 11. Homeschooling is going great. We have our daughter back. She's happy. She loves it. She gets to go outside a ton. She's doing great with her work. She never wants to go back to school. So I think this was just like such a good fit for her. I'm so glad that she begged us to homeschool because I'm glad that she's happy now and she's thriving. She no longer has anxiety like she was having at school because of the standardized testing. And it's just been great for her. I think homeschooling is just a better environment for kids that have a ton of energy.

Tools We Use And Final Notes

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Yeah, I think so too. And I also I wanted to mention two things because I don't know if we mentioned brands earlier, but we were talking about the focus drops, the organic, you know, herbs and vitamins. That's Mary Ruth's focus drops.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

Yeah, I'll link all of those in the comments. I actually have like on my Amazon storefront like her planner, like all of the other little things. Like we have some timers that she uses. I can link all of those. So if you want to check out the focus drops, I even take them during tax season and they definitely work. If you want any of those, I'll link those.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

And then the curriculum we were talking about, I don't think we mentioned it. We've mentioned it before on the podcast, but it's the good and the beautiful. That's the one we use. It's it's books, it's textbooks, it's pencil and paper. But that doesn't mean there's not some technology, especially for the older kids. There's optional videos for for math that maybe teach the lesson a little bit different way than the parent would. So sometimes Taylor will listen to me and watch the video, and between the two, she understands it a little bit better. So they have technology available, but they're not relying on it for everything. The problems for math are still solved on pencil and paper.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Yeah, I think that it's perfect for that. I think that it does a really good job slowly introducing tech. So you're not getting into any of that until you are writing really well. So she can sit down and write a paper. And now it's like, okay, you watch this video. The video is super helpful. It's like 10 minutes maximum. And then if you want to start typing, which she personally wants to start typing, so she's working on that, but we're still writing a ton. So I will link that below so that you can check out all of their things that they have. They even have free things on their website so that you can try lessons before you actually buy it. Well, I think we hit all of our points. This was a long episode because it's really been about what we've learned. I will put my favorite podcast episodes I've listened to a ton that are research-based that really helped me understand ADHD better. I, if anyone ever is talking to me about it, I'm like, let me send you this podcast because it was so helpful. But I think that that's probably all we have, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:33

That's all I have on it.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Well, until next time, thank you so much for listening to Well, this wasn't the Planned Podcast. We worked you really hard on this podcast. Make your juke screen so you don't miss a single podcast episode. Thank you. Have a good day!