Consistently Consistent - Homeschooling Journal

I'm re-learning a lesson: You have to be consistent to see real results.

My son is bordering on what many in public school systems, psychologist offices and probably even any medical professional might deem "A.D.D". He has trouble sitting down for any extended period of time to focus; you can literally watch his eyes wander left or right at anything that moves. While dealing with him and refusing to just put him in a box called broken, I have taken the challenge to prove that while yes he has difficulties that just makes me have to find out how he learns best.

I've discovered at least 5 things right now:

• He learns better in the late afternoon, almost night vs morning. I have pegged this as the "too tired to fight" stage of learning. He has more patience when he is less wound up and after a full day of keeping busy at about 6 or 7 pm he actually sits down. 
• He can pay attention to the line we're on if I lead his eyes with my finger on the page. Eventually I'm sure I can teach him to do this for himself, but it is a great tool for me at the moment to be able to not have to keep redirecting his attention to the part of the page we're at. I actually read this in an article about dealing with children who have attention problems. 
• If I am consistent to do schoolwork regularly, (by regularly I mean I have to stick to 5 days a week with an off day every couple days), not only does his confidence keep up, but he retains the knowledge much better and this lessens the amount of frustration we both feel when doing things he should know. Consistency is really key to many things in life, but when you're dealing with a child who already has an issue focusing you don't need to make anything more difficult by having any large lapse of time where the knowledge gets replaced by non-sense.  
• Extremely limit the exposure to TV and Video Games. I can't stress enough how important this is. We've actually devised a system where if he is having trouble focusing during a school session he will lose TV for the day because if he can't focus on school he doesn't need to be focusing on TV. He loses TV privileges first if he's going to receive punishment, in general, simply because I know how bad it is for his mind. 
• And last but not least!... I put on a timer. I give him a time limit to do his schoolwork in to receive a treat or lose a privilege. This helps him understand that dilly dallying while you're supposed to be doing schoolwork hurts you in the long run, just get it done and you can play all you want! 

Granted, I've only been doing this regularly for about 2 months now, but after dealing with so many stumbling blocks I think I've learned some valuable lessons. Every child is different and learns in a different way and it's our jobs to figure out how to make learning easier and more enjoyable for them so they'll retain it and flourish. I'm definitely open to any suggestions someone might give me... Do you have a distracted child you're homeschooling? Give me some tips!