AH> The hardest part is trying to find her
AH> learning style... and pinning her down to her seat for a while. I'm 
AH> to think she may be more of a "natural learner". She doesn't take well to
AH> bookwork. It won't keep her attention.
I'd like to know more about learning styles.  My son (age six) also is not 
interested in bookwork -- in fact, he resists it consciously.  I do want to 
train him to be able to do a little of it without complaining, but it will 
ot
be our main program since he really hates it and I don't want him to hate
learning.  
How much has your eight year old learned already?  I also have a seriously 
difficult child, who has never been diagnosed as ADHD, but she was evaluated 
by the school district and placed in a school for severely emotionally 
disturbed children, which is also where the ADHD children are placed here.  
She is a very bright child, and I had taught her to read before she started 
kindergarten, but her behavior is outrageous.  She does well in the special 
school, though.  There, they have two adults for every eight children and she 
excels and loves it.  She is going for another year, at least... partly 
because she really enjoys the school and partly because I need a break from 
her!  I will be homeschooling just the six year old boy... who may have ADD 
but is not hyperactive, thank the cosmic consciousness. 
Anyhow, I'm wondering, if your eight year old child has the problems with 
bookwork that my son has, what was she able to learn in public school?  I 
don't know about your area, but here the school was very insensitive to 
alternative learning styles so far as I was told and could tell on my own.  
All the children in the class were expected to do the same kind of work and 
y
son and his different drummer were a big challenge to the teacher because he 
was just refusing to fit in!  (He went to Kindergarten for 1/2 the year 
because he requested to have the experience of it, and he ended up requesting 
to stop going because other kids in the class were being physically cruel to 
him and the teacher couldn't stop it.)  The teacher had been planning to keep 
him in Kindergarten for another year... but apparently since I'm now 
homeschooling they will consider him as first grade because of his age.  
To give an example.. Aaron doesn't know any of the letters as far as naming 
them when he sees them, and has never said the entire alphabet all the way
through.  He also doesn't know most of the one-digit numbers yet.  He has 
resisted this kind of learning when it was offered to him, yet /on his own/ 
e
seems to develop an interest... but it has to be /on his terms/.  For 
instance, yesterday he created a "wild west town" out of construction paper.  
He brought me a piece of paper and insisted that I cut out the letters to 
create the words, "Saloon of the Old West".  That was a lot of words, so we 
settled on just "Saloon".  Then he wanted me to put the letters onto his 
saloon for him, but I convinced him that if I wrote out the word he could 
figure out the right order for himself.  I checked on this later and he did 
get the order right -- he just did the whole word backwords so it reads: 
"noolas".  I didn't tell him -- he was so pleased with this project he went
to sleep with it last night.  Oh -- he's left handed and has been doing 
hings
backwards ever since he was born (upside down).  So, I know I still have to
teach him to start from the left -- don't know why he hasn't picked this up
from all the reading we do, but one thing at a time.  At least he knows that
words are valuable and that's a good start.
AH> I have two kids on dexadrine. They both started on ritilin, but it didn't 
AH> much for either of them...some inconsistant improvement, but not much. 
AH> was no "bad" reactions...just very little reaction at all. The dexadrine 
AH> a BIG difference.
I'm wondering how you got the diagnosis and medication.  My daughter is seven 
and still has never had a diagnosis of any particular thing, and never has 
been offered medication even when I requested it! :(  We are starting to see 

new therapist now and he really made me feel bad about wanting a "label" for 
my daughter's condition, but he is setting up some neuro-psychiatric testing 
for us.  We'll see what happens...
Zaynab
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