hippin home school mom

Sep. 20, 2007

ADD?

My middle daughter is my greatest teaching challenge. I had her eyes checked last week and all was well. No eye problems at all. Something is not right. Reading in particular is very difficult for her. She does have difficulty paying attention ALL the time. For instance, this evening after dinner she went to the bathroom to wash her hands, forgot to wash and used the potty instead, still forgot to wash and to flush and came out front. I asked her if she washed...she told me she had forgotten. Then she went in the bathroom and flushed and came back out...when I asked her if she washed she said she had forgot and went back to the bathroom and finally washed her hands. I could list a million times where similar situations had taken place and that is just in regular life. At school it could, and does, take us 45 minutes to read 4 sentences. So what do I do? I am hopefully going to have her tested in the next few weeks. I don't want to medicate her. I am more interested in behavior modification. Do I have the patience, do I have what it takes to be this child's teacher? If I do, do I have what it takes to do that and have a normal rest of my life? My husband has no idea how the stress of teaching is affecting the rest of me. I have something like 15 weeks left in my pregnancy, I am exhausted and trying to be the perfect everything and all he sees is that I spent some cash that was allocated for another purpose. Do you have any idea what I went through today? Do you know that the money I spent on that pizza was spent to spare my sanity? Probably not. Ok, this has gotten way off the ADD issue. It has been a very difficult day and I am wondering if I am cut out for this homeschooling thing after all. May be I should just stick them in school and be done with it!!!

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Comments

Sep. 21, 2007 - Untitled Comment

Posted by tiarali79

Oh, you poor thing!

I just wanted to ask, have you checked out the effect that food additives have on children? We actually tried the failsafe diet and found that our troublesome child has food intolerances, not ADD. Apparantly it's quite common (for food to cause ADD-like symptoms, that is). There's a website you might want to check out at www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info .

I hope that whatever the diagnosis, you find the strength and comfort you need to cope.

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Sep. 21, 2007 - Untitled Comment

Posted by blessedwith2angels

I have a son with ADD and sometimes it is very difficult to deal with all the forgetfulness and the slowness. However, we have begun using strategies that worked for me when I taught school as well as some suggested by a psychologist, including behavior modification and things like that. If you would like I could tell you what we are doing. I know it is stressful, but hang in there! The rewards are great!

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Sep. 27, 2007 - reading your blog...

Posted by momtofive

I just wanted to tell you that my heart went out to you as I read your blog. My youngest is a little over a year, so the memories of homeschooling while pregnant are very fresh in my mind. Small things seemed overwhelming and I was always so tired. So very tired. I'm a person who is normally up until midnight or later - and I get up around 6:30 in the morning. I just haven't needed a lot of sleep. By the time I was pregnant with #5, I was going to bed around 9:30 p.m. and having a hard time getting up at 7:30. It was frustrating.
I know you scheduled for your daughter to see a teacher -- I'm interested in what you find out.

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Sep. 30, 2007 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Anonymous

My grandson is having these problems too.I really connected to the comments posted also. He gets tested in a couple of weeks.I will check out the food additive page also.
Thanks everyone

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