Moms With ADHD Homeschooling Children With ADHD

This series is all about homeschooling children with ADHD. Today, I’m sharing my own experience as a mom with ADHD homeschooling my own children with ADHD. This is for moms with ADHD homeschooling children with ADHD.

It is not uncommon for parents of children have ADHD to confess to me that they also have it. It can be especially hard for moms who struggle with ADHD when they are homeschooling their kids. We’ve talked so far in this series about ADHD in general, chatted about tips for combating the wiggles with your ADHD kids at home, and then also shared the best tips for motivating your ADHD kiddos.

Today, we’re going to talk specifically about strategies for when mom has ADHD too. According to ADDitude Magazine, there’s about a 60% chance that one parent has ADHD when there’s a child in the family who has ADHD. If more than one kiddo in your household has ADHD, that percentage goes up significantly. So the likelihood of one or more of the parents having ADHD when a kiddo is diagnosed is particularly high.

When Parents And Their Children Have ADHD

It’s not unusual for us parents, as we start to learn more and more about our children to discover more and more about ourselves, maybe things that were missed when we were kids or explained away or things that we just had better coping mechanisms for.

As we get older and as we have more demands on our time and our responsibility. It’s mom, who also has ADHD and when you homeschool, you’re mom with ADHD and you’re homeschooling children with ADHD.

Planning, meals, shopping for groceries, cleaning the house, making sure everybody has what they need, getting kids to the activities that they need to get to, making sure chores are done, motivating kids to do those chores and to do their schoolwork and to follow through on the practice for whatever activities they’re involved in. It gets overwhelming and can lead to burnout and feelings of failure, especially for a mom struggling to cope with ADHD.

Tips For Helping A Mom With ADHD

With or without an official diagnosis, if we’re starting to see those kinds of same patterns in ourselves, we need to start addressing ADHD as kind of a global family issue and not just a child issue. Supporting mom becomes a super important part of the strategies that involve the entire family.

Identify Your Own Triggers

It’s really important that as we discover what it is that triggers our own ADHD that we keep our conversations open. So let me give you a little background here. I have a couple kids who have ADHD. One was identified at one point and, you know, interestingly, that’s the same kiddo I’ve talked about before, who has also had identification in, in giftedness. Because of what I’ve discovered in working with him and my other child with ADHD, I’ve seen more and more and more of those symptoms and triggers in myself.

This is particularly true as I get older. Hormones change, life becomes increasingly demanding, and it becomes more and more apparent that some of those things that we struggled with when we were younger and maybe were able to overcome or compensate for earlier in our adulthood, are more difficult to compensate for.

Adult ADHD Diagnosis

I haven’t been officially diagnosed and I’m not sure necessarily that I’m going to pursue a diagnosis. I’m pretty comfortable calling myself an ADHD patient or identifying myself with ADHD because I’ve worked with so many people who have ADHD, adults and children and teens alike.

I think it’s important to trust your gut. If you feel like you need to pursue an identification or a diagnosis, then, then do it, do whatever it is you need to do to get the help that you need. I have gone through counseling at times at different points in my life for various different things.

So, I’m pretty comfortable with owning that diagnosis and owning the strategies that I’m currently using. And I’ll talk about some of those as we go through this podcast episode. All right. So one of the things that I want to tell you first and foremost is that if you identify in this way, you feel that you have ADHD or you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD.

Communicate Often About ADHD In Your Family

If you have trouble focusing, it’s important to keep the conversation open and normal and casual about that. “Hey guys, it’s really loud in here. I have a job I need to get done. Sometimes, it gets difficult for me to focus when I know things are going on in another room. Can you give me 30 minutes of quiet so I can get this finished? If you don’t think you can be quiet down here, can you each go to a different room, maybe upstairs and find something quiet to do in, in private and in like a calm way. Then I’ll come get you as soon as I’m done and we’ll go do something super fun outside.”

Help your children see you manage your own distractions, will help them do the same

Schedule Rest

My husband often says to me that nobody can live up to the expectations that I set, even myself, because I try to fit 17 hours into a three-hour period of tasks and activities. In my head I can get everything done, but It’s not humanly possible to get all of those things done. And so you need to schedule intentional downtime or you’ll fill it.

I share more examples, strategies, and encouragement in today’s episode of the podcast.

Raising Lifelong Learners Podcast #149: Moms With ADHD Homeschooling Children With ADHD

This continues our series all about homeschooling a child with ADHD. Today, I’m sharing my own experience as a mom with ADHD homeschooling my own children with ADHD. This episode includes research about the family genetics of ADHD, coping strategies for moms in the trenches, and how to create the best possible environment for homeschooling a child with ADHD when you have ADHD yourself.

Links And Resources From Today’s Show:

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