Natural foods, regular exercise, and good sleep are all easy methods to ease the symptoms of ADD. They don't go away, but they do ease up a lot. I cut out all unnatural stuff out of our diets (my daughter is 6, and I suspect that like me, she has ADD..... she sounds like your daughter).
We cut out all the red, yellow and blue dyes, all the high fructose corn syrup, and all the ingredients that I can't pronounce and that aren't found in nature, and we try to avoid fatty and fried foods. We now eat lots of whole grains, fruits and veggies (especially green veggies), white meats (mostly chicken), and fish (mostly salmon).
I have found that my daughter does so much better when we follow that kind of diet. I'm not strict about it.... I'm very realistic about it. We eat at home 97% of the time now, but when we're out and need to eat out, we do. I do try to encourage healthier choices (fruit instead of fries in a kids meal, milk or juice instead of soda.... never sodas!), though. Even watch her vitamins and medication. I try to only buy dye free meds (though not all meds are dye free.... I'm still waiting for a dye free cold med!), and we get our vitamins at a natural foods store. It makes a difference!
As far as regular exercise, I just throw my kids in the backyard to play a few times a week (more when the weather is nicer). That's my definition of regular exercise. They go tearing around the yard full speed like crazy people and that's plenty of exercise..... they get plenty of good sunshine that way too, which is vitamin D, which I think helps, too.
I put my girls to bed between 7:00-7:30 every night. Again, I'm not strict about it. Sometimes things happen and we get to bed later. But during the school week, I try hard to not plan things that would keep my kids from going to bed on time. We do have ballet once a week that always throws us off a little, but they're still in bed between 7:45-8:00 at the latest.
Anyway, those are things that we do and it helps. I'm not anti medication. I myself take adderall twice a day (well, I did until I got pregnant), and I expect that my daughter probably will someday too..... maybe..... my husband has ADD, too, and he has never taken anything for it, graduated at the top of his class in high school and in college, and is now a pilot in the military..... so it's not an impossible dream to think it can be done unmedicated (although his methods of doing a hundred million things all at once and finishing them all at random times drives me crazy!!!).
Hope this helps a bit!
