Having raised two "ADHD" boys without the "benefit" of medical intervention, I am in a good place to answer your question.
We certainly had no intention of medicating our child for what to us appeared to be natural aspects of his personality. Still, it had to be acknolwedged that he could be a major pain in the butt and needed to learn some discipline and focus as well as some social skills if he were to become a functioning adult. The interventions we did fell into three categories:
1) We did NOT send them to a regular public school. They are both very bright and capable academically and would have been bored to tears. Moreover, their energy and willingness to accept adverse consequences would have led very quickly to notes home demanding we have them "evaluated" for ADHD. So we used alternative schools and homeschooling, and also helped to create a new charter school that would meet our youngest's needs better. Patrick was homeschooled from 2nd to 5th grade, and returned in 6th to a regular school of his own accord. He never had any academic problems, had excellent attendance, did advanced math work, and graduated cum laude from a local high school. Pretty good results, I'd say, considering the dire predictions for "untreated ADHD". The youngest is in 8th grade and is a model student at his charter school, which is a democratic school where the kids create their own learning objectives and sign up for classes they are interested in. Both appear to be "cured," but I don't think it would have happened if they went to regular schools. They would have been beaten down and humiliated for being who they are. We didn't allow that to happen.
2) Positive discipline: I was fortunate to get a job working with "emotionally disturbed" kids and learned a lot of good behavior management techniques. But I found that we had to modify many of them to deal with these smart and unique children. The main thing was to focus on what they needed to learn and create concrete reinforcement programs for them to earn stickers and rewards for doing pro-social things. There are many books on this topic, such as "discipline with love and logic." The main modifications are based on the fact that these kids LOVE excitement and stimulation! You can get a long way by getting very intense and excited about asking them to do things, and about acknolwledging them when they do. You can also use their tendency to be "oppositional" to your advantage, by using "reverse psychology" techniques like betting they won't do what you want, predicting how long it will take them to do something and being mad when they beat your prediction, and so forth. These tricks work VERY well on kids who thrive on conflict. You make it FUN for them to do what you want. Each kid is different, but creating programs to help them feel good about doing what they're supposed to do is the heart of the matter.
3) Activities: get him involved in things he likes that involve other kids. Sports, after school classes, clubs, etc., can be really fun, but in order to participate, you have to behave appropriately. This creates motivation to learn new social skills in a way that school, which is usually dull as dishwater, simply can't compete with. If these kids are really motivated to do something they like, they can exert a great deal of self-discipline with some guidance. It's when you want them to do something that they want to avoid that the problems occur! So keep them doing things they like, and help them learn how to be successful at them.
Those are the pathways we followed. It is not only possible, but very rewarding to help these kid succeed. As I've said many times, they make great adults, if we can just survive their childhoods without breaking their spirits!
Hope that helps!
---- Steve
---- Steve
