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In a previous episode of our podcast, I talked with Katie Thacker about her experiences with ADHD and how that works in a Charlotte Mason home school. Well, many of you have benefited from that episode and we are so grateful. And many of you have also sent in some follow-up questions. We’re going to discuss those today. Joining me today is my friend and coworker, Katie Thacker.
Sonya: Katie, your ADHD tips and explanations really resonated with so many people in the audience. And we have received some questions. So let’s just go through some of those questions and comments and pick your brain a little bit more about your experiences, see if we can be even more helpful.
Katie: Okay, and I do want to send out my thanks to my daughter, Cora. She’ll be 15 by the time this episode airs, and so for many of the questions, I was able to ask her and get her feedback, which has been really nice. As she gets older, she’s got a better understanding of how her mind works.
Sonya: So you get a nice peek in there. You don’t have to wonder what’s going on. Well, sometimes I’m sure you still do!
Katie: Yes, sometimes we still wonder. (laughs)
Sonya: But she’s been able to express it more and more, and that is a wonderful benefit. All right, so what’s the first question we want to address?
Katie: I have read some questions about older students as we get closer to times where they may be moving out and going to live on their own. How do we set them up for success? Because we can be the ones who are managing all of the things and keeping an eye out for times that ADHD is causing struggles that we don’t want to deal with. So how can we set them up to do that? One of the things is teaching our children how to set up triggers for themselves.
Sonya: What do you mean by “triggers”?
Katie: When we are wanting to form a new habit, a trigger would be like what you wrote about in Laying Down the Rails for Yourself. You put the water bottles out so that you would see them. You were being kind to your future brain in that. That’s what I will tell Cora a lot: What can we do? What can we do to make it easier for us? We’ve got technology. I can tell my phone to remind me tomorrow at 9 a.m. that I wanted to register for this event or I wanted to do whatever. And so we have built the habit—and I use it for me too—when I hear something that I want to remember, get it somewhere, write it down where I know I’m going to see it, or tell my phone to remind me, and that is me being kind to my future brain. We are practicing that with Cora, and now I’m having her put the reminder—she’s got a phone—so I’m telling her, you put it on your phone. I’m not going to put it on mine and then it’s I remind you; you put it on yours because I want you to practice getting the reminder and then acting on it.
Sonya: …using that tool for herself in a good way.
Katie: Yes, and it’s almost an assumption that there’s a good chance that I might forget about this tomorrow. Why don’t I just make sure that something’s there? We have technology, or if you don’t want to use technology, there are other ways. We’ve got a friend, who is an adult, who is thriving with ADHD, and she has a notebook. That notebook has everything. She tried to use separate notebooks for different things, but it was too much to try and sort it all. Everything goes in the notebook, and the habit she built is to actually go back and look at the notebook on a regular basis, and that thing goes with her everywhere.
Those are the kinds of things we can set up; what are the things that we can do to make it easier, to put less stress, less decision-making, on ourselves? There are reminders, but then we can also put items in places that we know they will be where we need them to be. So if you are getting ready for co-op the next day, and you know that you need to bring that book: Go get it right now. Go put it in the car right now, the car you know you’re taking to co-op the next day. Then it comes with you, and then you don’t have to remember in the morning when everybody’s all scattered and trying to get ready. Those are things we can do to set ourselves up. We had started out with, we’ll put it by the door. But many times an ADHD brain is going to walk right by that item sitting by the door. So put it somewhere where it can’t be forgotten. You know that it’s going to take the same transportation that you are to wherever it is that you’re going.
Sonya: That is wonderful. So, what I’m hearing is, it is very much about setting up habits. The habits, as we’ve talked about, the habits set your child up for success in life. It’s just which habits to focus on when you have those types of tendencies in the way that you think. That’s wonderful.
Katie: We can understand when you have a lot going on, you’re going to forget a lot of things. And that’s okay, that’s just how your brain works. You have all these other gifts that maybe others don’t have. Just say to yourself, “I’m going to forget in the morning. So what can I do to give my mind some peace in that?”
Sonya: I love how you say being kind to your future self, your future brain—but I find I write those things down immediately as well for my present state of mind. I don’t want to have to carry all of those things around in my brain, I want to be able to think about other things and focus on people who are with me. So, getting it out of my head and down where I’m going to find it, where I know—I have to have a system where I know this is going to work for me; this is what I always check. As you said, the notebook, the phone reminders, this is the system that works for me. So with our older children, one of the habits you might need to work on is finding that system that’s going to work well.
Katie: And it’s also understanding that a system may not be permanent. I think many of us, generally, and then especially those who have ADHD, thrive on fresh and new. So you may get a system that works really, really well and you’re thinking, “This is it.”
Sonya: “The rest of my life. This is going to work.”
Katie: It may not. It may lose its shine after six months. That’s okay. You got six months of functionality. Now you get to try something new. That doesn’t mean that the old system failed. It just means that you’re going to benefit from something fresh. Maybe the notebook works for a while for you and then you find yourself drifting from that. Go ahead and get something new. That’s okay. Just know that you’re just making an adjustment because freshness helps you stay involved.
[Your system] may lose its shine after six months. That’s okay. You got six months of functionality. Now you get to try something new. That doesn’t mean that the old system failed. It just means that you’re going to benefit from something fresh.
Sonya: All right. Those are great tips. Let’s take another question.
Katie: Okay. So one that I got from a mom: She was having a hard time discerning with her preteen daughter about disobedience and ADHD.
Sonya: Oh, I can see that, yeah.
Katie: Because if you tell a child to do something and she doesn’t do it, many of us automatically think it’s disobedience. That can be a hard one, because we do want to get to the point that we can ask our children to do something and then we can expect it to be completed. But disobedience is a heart issue; it is when we are intentionally deciding that the person who has asked us to do something doesn’t matter enough for us to do it. Many times with a child with ADHD, if something’s not completed, that heart issue didn’t happen. It wasn’t an intentional decision to think, “I don’t care what Mom says. I’m going to stay on the couch,” or, “I’m going to do it later because I don’t know why she thinks it has to be done now,” or any of those thoughts that can happen. Many times with our kids, that would be disobedience. But if it truly is that there was a distraction, or the message wasn’t fully conveyed and received, or whatever it may be, that is going to be potentially a neurodivergence issue. So that’s not disobedience.
But it is still an issue that needs to be addressed in your home. Something needed to be done, and it didn’t happen. That needs to be taken care of, but how you handle it is going to be very different, and we don’t want to set up our kids whose brains work differently to feel like they are failing. They need a different structure, a different setup.
Sonya: What I’m hearing is we should not assume our child’s intentions. When they don’t do what we say, we can’t just automatically assume it’s because they are rebelling against us and refusing to obey. It may not be that heart attitude at all, it may be something totally different.
Katie: We’re disappointed, right? We needed something done. We wouldn’t have asked if we didn’t need something completed. Our disappointment can turn into a feeling of anger towards that child, or we can feel personally offended because we feel like maybe that child dismissed us. So it’s important for us to practice, and we may need a lot of practice, taking a deep breath, looking at the situation, figuring out, “Okay, I asked you to unload the dishwasher, that didn’t happen, can we replay what went on in that situation that it didn’t happen and figure out where it’s going?” Then if you get attitude from your child at that point, then you know you might have a heart issue.
Our disappointment can turn into a feeling of anger towards that child, or we can feel personally offended because we feel like maybe that child dismissed us.
Sonya: Right, so you can deal with it as a heart issue. So what I’m hearing is you’re going to deal with it. It’s just, from which angle? Are you coming at it from a heart attitude issue, or are you coming at it from a neurodivergent issue? You need a different set of tools. We need to work a different angle in order for you to better comprehend and communicate and be able to obey, be able to do what you have been asked to do.
Katie: Usually they want to, right? They don’t want Mom and Dad to be upset about things not getting done. We get a lot of questions from families. “Well, what do I actually do? What is the actual thing that I do in my home to make this happen?” And thankfully, there are a lot of resources out there that can give us very practical tips, and different things will work for different kids.
Sonya: Yeah, there’s no way you can give a one-size-fits-all answer to that question.
Katie: No, because then we would all just do that, right?
Sonya: But the child is a person. And we have to treat them as such. Each one, individually, respecting the way that that child thinks, the way that the child is made, the way that their brain works.
Katie: And I’ve sent out a web address to several families who have asked us questions and it’s ADDitudemag.com.
Sonya: Attitude as in your heart attitude?
Katie: It is, but it’s a play on words from when ADHD was called ADD.
Sonya: So it’s A-D-D.
Katie: ADD-itude Mag. It’s a magazine, but they also have a website. They have a lot of webinars about different things. A lot of it is geared towards students who are in brick-and-mortar schools, but much of that can be used in a home classroom.
Sonya: So is it written to the students?
Katie: It’s written mostly to the parents and adults who have ADHD. So if you—it runs in families—so if you are a homeschool parent who is trying to improve your own situation around ADHD, and you want to help your student as well, I highly recommend that website. They do a lot of webinars. There are a lot of articles. A lot of it is very practical. So there are ideas like maybe trying to color code something, or do this or do that. There are actual action items that you can try, and they can also add that level of freshness of a new system, whatever it is that may work for you.
And there doesn’t tend to be ideas that would cost a lot of money. So it’s not: go buy this fancy planner system, it’s going to fix your life; or go purchase this, or invest in this kind of thing. It’s small things that you can change in your atmosphere to just help that habit, that discipline, just happen a little bit more. Any improvement that you can find, it’s just going to make things a little bit smoother. You may not ever get to the point where everything is working perfectly fine, but even just having it work better…
Sonya: I don’t know if life ever gets that way.
Katie: Right, we’re always going for that.
Sonya: Okay, we’ll leave a link in the description so everybody can find that. I’m assuming that you don’t agree 100% with everything that is in there, as usual.
Katie: No. and as an organization, they’re collecting a lot of input from all kinds of experts in the field, who have all kinds of different opinions. And there are a lot of things about different struggles that can travel along with ADHD, so they may or may not apply to your child based on what your child has got going on. But it does just have that wealth of practical information. So if you come across things that don’t quite fit with what your values are for your family, well, then you just put that one aside.
Sonya: Let me ask you one final question as we wrap up. And you can choose to answer this or not. It’s up to you. I know Cora is in ninth grade? So you’ve got about three years left with her in your home. What are your goals for these last three years in order to help her launch, if you will, with the tools that she needs in place? I realize she won’t have every single tool for the rest of her life in place, because we’re all still growing and learning more things, even as adults. But what are your goals that you are still working toward in those three years? Or do you not have goals, it’s just we’re heading this general direction, let’s see how far we get?
Katie: We do have some options of paths, right? The Bible says He will make straight your paths. So we say that a lot in our home, because we have many options there and we know that God will be there for us and walk with us in what those may be. But some of the things that we’ve talked about is that potentially in her senior year, while she’s with me, maybe taking some classes at the community college so that she can practice being in that environment while she’s still living at my house, rather than making a full switch all at once if she chooses to go to college. She does have a job; she coaches kids at a gymnastics gym. And one of the ways that we’re practicing is that she’s in charge of her schedule, and she has to put that stuff on the calendar. But I do come behind right now and check to make sure it’s all there. But that independence is big for her. She, right now, really likes doing it and knowing what’s going on and being in charge of that. So there are some ways that we can practice having her branch out a little bit and seeing how it goes and how we can help her. And then when things don’t go well, when something’s forgotten or mixed up, or she read something too fast and misinterpreted what it was, or whatever it may be, then we’re there with her to be like, “Okay, well, how could we change this next time?” It’s how we learn with different kinds of things. But the more opportunity they have to practice in a safer spot when they’re with you, then the more experience they have when they venture off to the next step. And we don’t know what college or post-high school is going to look like for her yet. She’s still discerning about what her strengths are. But we just want to expose her to as many things as we can.
Sonya: That’s great. Thanks so much, Katie.
Katie: Thank you.
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