In my experience with my 10 yr old son gifted ADHD with LDs on Biphentin, we had an incredible 1st week then it went down but a bit better than before meds the Dr. saw us every 3rd week and upped the meds until he got to 60mg.  Keep a close eye and you will find the right dose or the right medication.  My son still has trouble with talking too much in class but is able to focus and was on the honer roll last year.  Good luck.

Several thoughts whir through my ADD head.  I have 3 kids all with ADD, ADHD and some kind of processing issues with some anxiety thrown in.  Two have graduated, one is in 5th grade.  My ADHD son is a sophomore in college, he still has organizational issues.  That is in all areas.  When he was young, he was distracted in class and had difficulty writing.  He wouldn’t hear all the instructions, but would think he had, and the resulting work was not what it was supposed to be.  He was also emotionally younger than his peers, but intellectually ahead of them.
Different doctors will have differing opinions.  You know your son the best of anyone, what he can do and what he has difficulty with.  People take in information differently.  You could have a mismatch with learning style and teaching style.  Six seems so young for the level of homework you describe. 
I would recommend the book “Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults: ADHD, Bipolar, Ocd, Asperger’s, Depression, and Other Disorders”  by James T. Webb   It goes through and compares gifted traits that could be seen as other things as well as indications of the other disorders.
Another resource on learning styles is Dr. Ellen Arwood.  “Her specialization is in language which she defines as a set of concepts used to organize a child’s or adult’s thoughts, behavior, and ability to learn new knowledge” 
http://www.aracnet.com/~apricot/index.htm
Don’t forget to encourage your son with the things he is good at.

May I ask why you medicate if you home school?

I don’t mean to offend - I believe that meds can be the merciful and appropriate measure for many kids - but isn’t the reason we home school so that we can tailor the teaching of the curriculum to kids with atypical learning styles, rather than medicating them to help them cope with a classroom environment that doesn’t meet their needs? Because you homeschool you can tailor his home classroom to meet his needs so he won’t need medication.

So he skips around - let him!! He is only six, gifted or not. And because he’s gifted, he learns differently. Because you’re homeschooling you can follow his lead - you don’t have to medicate him to help him follow the lead of someone else.

You’re homeschooling!! Providing you cover the appropriate curriculum content at some point, you can arrange your day any way you like! Instead of meds, why not exercise him to alleviate his hyperactivity and then educate him based on his flexible, energetic learning style?

Btw, in addition to walking everywhere we go, my gifted/ADHD kids each spend almost 6 hours every week in sports (gymnastics, swimming and skating). It REALLY helps. I’ve never medicated them - instead I tire them out, and then teach them what they need to learn in small, regular doses.

I write stories tailored to their interests rather than having them struggle to read something they can’t focus on because it bores them. I create math sheets that are suited specifically for their levels and repetition tolerance (my daughter has very low tolerance for mindless repetition). These are just examples of how I teach to their learning styles.

Is it easy? No. Is it working? Yes.

Forgive me - like I said, I’m not “anti-meds”, but to me, medicating is what we do when we can’t home school…. Meanwhile you’re in a perfect position to meet the educational needs of your son, and yet you’re contemplating raising his dose rather than not medicating him. Sorry - it just doesn’t make sense to me.

I wish you luck though. It’s never easy, no matter which road you take

Btw, I also have:

¡ÈMisdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults: ADHD, Bipolar, Ocd, Asperger¡Çs, Depression, and Other Disorders¡É  by James T. Webb  

...great book! I recommend it too.

I not only recommend Dr. Webb’s book, but also looking into Ross Greene’s Lost at School. It’s a book outlining a discipline system that works very well for our 2e kids.

I wouldn’t try to substitute home schooling for meds. I think meds are critical to letting your child learn to cope with the disabilities, such as executive functioning issues, processing deficits and usually some dysgraphia that come with the ADHD in a gifted kid. And let’s not forget learning to address the social cues perception issues and the pragmatic speech issues that are often labeled “emotional immaturity” and/or “oppositional defiance” when combined with impulse control problems.

Meds aren’t a simple on-off switch. My daughter must have tried 20 different combinations and dosages. For her, combining a stimulant with Intuniv and an anti-anxiety drug was the key.

The stimulants can exacerbate the anxiety in a kid who is predisposed to it. And the Intuniv doesn’t intensify the anxiety, but it does amplify the focusing and settling effects of the stimulants.

NEVER EVER let anyone tell you that this is as good as it gets. And never let anyone tell you to forget your son’s gifts and focus on his deficits.

Last, but not least, if you’re in an urban environment, reach out and see if you can collect a few other 2e kids and start a co-op so that you can hire and share a gifted ed and a special ed teacher, and some integrated therapy.

That’s how my daughter’s school started here in NYC (The Lang School), and the model of pulling only 2e kids together and having them learn in a school environment, but one that’s tailored TO THEM, is incredibly powerful.

Best of luck.

I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until a few weeks ago. I don’t remember my childhood well, but I know that the only reason I was considered gifted as a child was because I loved to learn. You don’t need to micromanage a child’s learning if he loves it.

Ways of going about this:
-Ask simple, stimulating questions.
-Put a positive image on curiosity.
-Give him resources(which you undoubtedly do)
-Trust him. He will learn. The things kids (especially those with ADHD) are interested in or curious about are the things that they will learn with lightning intensity.

We had to sit with our son until 4th grade, when he started to be able to do it himself (during recess when the classroom is quiet).  Try not to get discouraged.

My son just turned 8, and we homeschool, too. It takes all day because his attention spam is short and he is wiggly. It is an ADHD thing, but also a boy thing. He is on a total of 20mg Adderall, and that is so he can focus, concentrate, and act without impulse at home. If he were unmedicated, and we have tried just to see what it’s like occasionally, he couldn’t focus on anything, he would fight with his sister, blurt out inappropriate things, the list goes on. But about schooling, six is too young to expect any child to sit still. We work for 20 minutes, take a break, another 20 minutes, break, etc. Our son might be mature enough for a self-contained gifted class next year, but we’re not sure yet since maturity comes so slow for a boy with ADHD. he also has comorbid ODD, which doesn’t help.