ADHD and medication

Half days of camp worked out very well for Aharon.  He had a great time after some adjustment. 

Chen has been doing Bio every day.  I don't know if I updated about Chen.  I got her a psychoeducational evaluation because she was having trouble even with time and a half for testing and wanted double time.  It turns out she has severe ADHD, both in terms of hyperactivity and inattention.  She also has trouble processing.  It's not one of the usual processing disorders.  I did a bit of research and most types of visual processing are related to the inability to make sense of the letters or to decode words.  Chen can see all the letters and read words very quickly.  But when the words are strung together, by the time she gets to the end of the sentence, she has lost the thread of the beginning of the sentence.  So then she has to reread it.  The evaluator said she watched Chen read some things SEVEN times before she understood it enough to move forward.

I was actually pretty shocked about the hyperactivity.  Yeah, sure, I knew she was "active."  Lots of the kids in my extended family for generations are "active."  But since she has always had freedom of movement and didn't have to sit for extended periods of time and has always been able to take a break when she needs to, I never experienced her as hyperactive.  Also, compared to Elazar, who actually starts literally climbing things and breaking things if forced to sit still, Chen being a bit wriggly or needing to quietly pace never struck me as "hyperactive."

The inattention I was well aware of.  Chen has never been able to concentrate for more than 15 minutes.  In unschool, we addressed this by stopping when she wanted to stop.  She took and takes a lot of breaks.  (Obviously this became an issue for testing, which is why I ended up taking her to evaluated.)  I had always thought that this would be the kind of thing she would either outgrow or work around with maturity as she grew older.
As she took college courses last year, one per semester, and was able to get As in them, I felt she was maturing into college level work but not at the pace that I had hoped for.  It seemed possible that in 2 or 3 more years (she's heading into senior year of high school now) she would be able to take more than one college course without being wiped out emotionally for the rest of the day.  But maybe not.

Chen urged me to take her for ADHD medication.  I was hesitant but felt that at 17, she was old enough and mature enough to make that kind of decision and felt that if she wanted it, she deserved to give it a try.

As she fought through the side effects to find a pill that had the least side effects for her, it became clear that it helped her markedly.  She is so thrilled to have something that allows her to concentrate for a couple of hours a day (she's taking a low dose of immediate release, so she gets a short burst for just a few hours, which is all you need in homeschool to accomplish a lot).

I wondered if maybe I was wrong all these years to not have her evaluated earlier and not have her on medication earlier. 

But I don't think so.  As I spoke with the evaluator about recommendations for students with Chen's level of learning disability, it turns out that intuitively I have been giving her all of the recommended accommodations.  Because she has been able to choose her studies and when and for how long, and because she has had the time to read and reread as much as she needs, she has been happily and excitedly learning, with none of the stress, pain, self-doubt, anxiety or frustration that often accrues to students suffering from ADHD.  Her education has been a beautiful, fruitful, and fascinating adventure.

Regarding whether or not she would have been better off starting medication earlier, I think it makes sense that she started it when she herself was feeling the frustration of not being able to concentrate and when she herself desired the ability to focus for longer. 

Might she have accumulated more knowledge and information had she been on medication earlier?  Maybe, maybe not.  She has learned a lot and a lot of very unusual things.  One of the tenets of unschooling is that there is a trust that a person can always find a way to learn something they are interested in learning, at any point that they want to learn it.  So there is no rush to "get it in."  If you don't learn math and then at age 35 you become interested in math, then you find a class or a person or a book or a website to help you learn math.

The only way that this has altered my plans for Elazar (whom I'm sure has ADHD) is that I'll be more forceful in trying to get him an IEP when he gets to high school (I tried with Chen, but because she was always doing grade level work, she didn't qualify).  And he will be aware of how medication is helping Chen, so we will pursue that when he becomes interested, if he becomes interested.  I believe that we will continue the same path of unschooling for him and not medicate him so that he can sit and focus for the classic high school curriculum.  Unless he asks for that.