Hi Tiffany! It’s great to hear from you!

I was in a similar situation with our pediatrician (who I love, by the way). Unless our kids were having trouble in school, then he didn’t want to diagnose them as ADHD or prescribe medicine. I can understand that and I’m glad he’s not a pill pusher, but I would have liked to know for certain earlier. Anyway, once our oldest was diagnosed, we still decided not to medicate and (so far) we still don’t. So it can be done!

You can absolutely do it your own way in Texas. TX is very generous with its latitude for homeschooling parents. We’re in GA and we basically use the list of objectives as our basis and work on skills in that order. It’s worked out fine for us so far! By the way, my soon-to-be seventh grader is about to use a more structured online program and I’ll let you know how that goes. 🙂 If you want more support, feel free to join our ADHD Homeschooling Facebook group!

Instead, she loved it! (imagine my horror!)

Thinking about it later, I realized:
1. She was in a quiet, non-distracting environment
2. She had a structure and a routine to her day
3. She had scheduled movement breaks, in the form of two recess periods and a lunch break

In other words, it was *better* for her ADHD traits than my usual system of everyone at the dining room table, do this list of tasks however you want, choose your own schedule sort of system. That level of independent work and background noise works fine for my non-ADHD kids, but this one just can’t hack it. She *needs* the structured environment.

I still don’t make her raise her hand to ask me a question, though 🙂

Hi! Our state is not one that requires a portfolio, so we’re pretty relaxed with lessons. If we did have to turn one in, I think that I would do a version of school at home myself. But one thing you CAN do is to look up the reading, math, and ELA objectives for your state and use that as the basis for your unit studies. That’s pretty much what I do here. Boxed curriculum is (for us) wayyyy too much to try to get through. But when I work with the objective list, I can weave several objectives into one unit and knock out a bunch of them at once. 🙂

For my soon-to-be four-year-old, I use Starfall on the tablet. She plays with it for an hour while I work on the most important subjects with the older kids. She’s picked up letters, numbers, letter sounds, basic shapes, and more just from that app.

Hope this helps! And thanks for visiting! 🙂

It really depends on the state you live in. I’ve homeschooled in Mississippi, Alabama, and Oregon, which have much less stringent laws than states like Tennessee and New York. In Mississippi, I was required to go to the truant office, register as a home schooler and submit a proposed curriculum. Alabama required I belong to a group, called a “covering” that I submitted grades and attendance to. In Oregon, I just register with the school board and my kids take a standardized test every couple of years. These states have laws that allow us to be flexible within their parameters so my kids can learn what they need in the way that suits them.

How do you legally unschool? I am liking the curriculum I’m using but it’s the”school at home” with a very set schedule which was a part is my problem with public school. I feel very rushed and disorganized. Any suggestions?

Hi! I’ve known some parents who’ve used online public school and they’ve said similar things about the workload and trying to keep their kids on schedule. I’m so sorry it’s been a struggle for you. Hopefully, you’ll find a learning method that works best for him and you. And I hope you can get a clear diagnosis soon!

Thanks for stopping by. 🙂