Our son was dx'ed this past summer and we decided to not medicate at the time. We met with the school psych and teachers to come up with a game plan. So far what we have been doing is working and I am hopeful for this year :)
What we are focusing on is trying to get Isiah aware of his own behavior and how it effects others. When he is being overly noisy at home, then we make him aware it by asking him to monitor himself and asking how "what is your noise level right now?" They are doing something very similar at school during independant time since that is his noisiest time. They have set up a number system of 1-5. 1 is being quiet with no noises/talking and doing work well. 2 is making a slight noise but working well. 3 is making noises/too much talking and doing some work. 4 is making loud noises/talking loudly and not working hard enough. 5 is being completely off task and being too loud or talking too much. She will come to him periodically during independant time and ask him to chose a number on how he thinks he is doing and the goal is for them to match each other. Sometimes he will choose the better number when she thinks he is doing a different number, so they don't "match". If he makes five matches with her then he gets to do something special like go read a book with his speech therapist or play with some classroom toy that he likes or something like that. So far this is working and he is becoming more aware of his behavior!
He was having problems in the hallway and standing in line so they made him the line leader and the "quiet shoelace inspector". He walks up and down the lines, inspecting shoes and tapping kids on the shoulder if they need their shoelaces tied. He loves the job and it keeps him out of trouble hehe
And for homework we are listening to "pop"/Top 100 music lol I heard that listening to music with a beat will help stimulate your brain and many people work well with music....both me and my husband do, so why not try with Isiah too. Today was a great day for homework. He clipped right through it, tapping his pencil to the beat or tapping his foot. He had NO problem today and I was very happy about that since he had more homework than usual. I hope that the music continues to work.
So there are our changes and so far so good. I am feeling optimistic about staying off meds for right now and that is our goal for now. The last two school years they started off good but by Christmas we were going downhill. I am not holding my breathe but I do feel better about this year so far. His attitude seems so much better now that we have done these changes plus some other minor things that will help his self esteem; ie stickers, line leader, number thing....
Sound like you are seeing some positive results. We started with positive reinformcent behavior modification and got positive results in the behavior areas. It did not help with the school achievement. She worked so hard and had mostly Fs and Ds (except computers and math where she does well). She has dyslexia and the ADHD makes it too hard to learn compensation skills. That is where the meds have helped her move from Fs to As and Bs. For us the combination has worked wonders. I even tried white noise and music for her homework because I use music when I crunching data at work. Keep posting about what works. It gives the rest of us things to try out.