As a special education teacher, there are things you can do outside of medication to help your child, even though you will find in the research that medication does produce the best results! However, be careful as some medications make some children lethargic, and that is not what you want.
Talk with your child's teacher and help find ways to alleviate strain on your child, perhaps by getting them to create a signal where the child can leave the class environment for a few minutes to break up the time they need to pay attention, to chunk their homework into smaller pieces so they do not get easily distracted, to allow for movement in activities in the classroom or to create a reward system for staying on task as long as possible (increasing the time as they improve!) The biggest thing you can do as a parent is to educate yourself and to have lots of patience. Once you understand the disorder, you can understand and empathize with what your child feels!
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