ODD mom moments

M&Ms are magical. Didn’t you know?

In many ways, homeschooling Aurora has become a huge blessing. We school from about 9:00 am until about 1:00 pm with a break for lunch. I work with Aurora on schoolwork during her best hours of the day. We do no schoolwork during those really difficult hours of the day like right before dinner or right before bed…typical times for kids to do homework. 

I have been able to make daily adjustments to fit her learning style and speed. Some things are easier for her…like writing and art. Math, however, is just a daily trial. 

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My turn. Aurora here.

One of my mom’s specialties is her ability to homeschool me without freaking out. One of my usual problems is math. Mommy just sits there, right by me, for an hour, doing almost absolutely nothing, while I do my math. I also complain almost the whole school time, and she puts up with it. I am very grateful for my mom.

Math is an everyday challenge for me (except for the weekends of course). For instance: dividing. Whenever I do division, I have to take the time to remember all of the steps. That takes a long time to do, for me at least.    

I try. I really do but I just can’t. Well I can, but it usually takes about an hour. Actually if I think about it, it only used to take an hour. Now it takes about fifteen to thirty minutes. Now I know that still seems like a long time but it’s actually not a very long time for me.

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Isn’t she the greatest? (Disclaimer #1: sometimes I do freak out. Disclaimer #2: I usually do something while I sit next to her. And it’s usually something totally productive…like Amazon shopping or Jetpunk quizzes.) 

So when we first started homeschooling, Aurora was excited. It was new and fresh. That lasted about two weeks. And then reality set in. I started her on an easier level in math, but it slowly got harder as she caught up to where she had been. We took it slow as I tried to adapt to her learning speed. But there’s no getting around the fact that ADHD makes math tricky. She has to pay attention through a whole problem beginning to end. If she gets distracted after the first step, she has a hard time finding where she was before she got distracted. When doing long multiplication, for example, she will multiply the first digit, get distracted (usually doodling), see an answer there and think she finished. Or she will multiply the second digit and forget that the number she carried was from the first digit. It becomes a jumble. She gets frustrated and distracts herself by doodling some more. She has a beautifully illustrated math workbook.

As we started our homeschool journey, math quickly became the hardest part of our homeschool day. 

“Would you like to start with math or LA?” I asked.

“Neither,” she responded.

“Math it is.”

“No, I’m not doing math.”

“Ok, let’s start with LA.”

After finishing LA:

“Time for math,” I said brightly.

“I told you I’m not doing math.”

“I’m sorry, it’s not a choice.”

“I’m not doing it!” she screamed.

“I guess I can call your school and tell them you’re coming back. I’ll let a different teacher deal with it.”

I took out my phone and dialed.

“Well, I just wouldn’t go.”

“School is not optional. It is the law. I would love it if you would do your work with me, but if not, you can do it with a public school teacher.”

And I pushed call.

“Hi, this is—“

“No, I’m not going! Don’t call them!” Aurora wailed.

I looked at her. “Would you like to try again?”

“Yes,” she sobbed.

“Ok, let’s do math.”

I experimented a little with timing. I found that her medication needed about 30 minutes to take effect. If I started school before those thirty minutes, you better believe there would be a meltdown. Sometimes I pushed through and made her start, but it was far more effective if I stepped back during a meltdown and allowed her medication some time to kick in.

I was careful about letting her have breaks as well. She focused a little better if she played outside for twenty minutes in between subjects.

Still, math was a struggle.

I took a suggestion from the book “The Explosive Child” and decided to make doing math without a fight our one behavior that we were going to focus on fixing. So I set up a reward system just for math. For every math problem she finished, she got either one marshmallow, one M&M, or one penny. She loves M&Ms, so I usually used M&Ms. She had twenty-two questions each day, so I was forking over twenty-two M&Ms each day. Does this sound like bribery? Yeah…well, I prefer the term positive reinforcement. The most effective consequences for ADHD kids are immediate and frequent. This reward system was both of those. 

Now you are probably wondering if it worked. Absolutely.

Aurora was much more willing to do her math. She still complained a bit because that’s her way.  

However, for my child math is a metaphorical mountain, and M&Ms are the magical medicine that moderated her mood about mastering that monstrosity.

And this ends today’s lesson on alliteration.

And you thought I was only going to talk about math.

After about six months, we were able to completely phase out the magic math M&Ms. Aurora just does her math every day now. She doesn’t love it, but she does it. The difference is that she now knows she can do it because she has succeeded over and over again.

I pulled them out again not long after, however, when she started pushing back about having to take medication. I immediately started allowing her to use M&Ms to take her medication. I remembered reading about positive association and how we can change our attitude about something we dislike by pairing it with something we do like. I wanted to turn taking medication into something that brought Aurora joy, so she got M&Ms every morning with medication for almost two years. Did it work?

Absolutely. Again. M&Ms are magical.

I share this with you all because I feel like it is an example of an ODD parenting triumph. When I first was learning about oppositional defiant disorder, I read multiple stories from parents about their ODD child. And they were all depressing. I couldn’t help but wonder, is there no hope. Generally there wasn’t much. Mostly these parents were exhausted and scared and at a loss as to how to continue on with their children. I get that. But I want to put my story out there, too, as a symbol of hope. Maybe some people won’t agree with my solutions, but that’s ok. I’m going to celebrate anyway. These triumphs are sometimes hard to come by, but they do exist. M&Ms will always be magical to me.