How to cope when your entire family has ADHD
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
Here is my take as an adult with ADHD in a house with 2 elementary kids and 2 adults who work full time. One of my kids probably has it, the other does not.
1. You need a nanny that does NOT have ADHD 2. You potentially need a separate house manager that does NOT have ADHD. My NT husband fills this role for us. I still do plenty of things typically allocated to the mom, but my husband manages the calendar entries, signs us up for conferences, makes appointments, etc. If neither of you can handle that, you need an assistant who reads your emails and updates your calendars with the whole season’s worth of baseball games, sets a reminder for spirit week, and gives you a run down every few days of things like: Venmo the class mom Do you want to bring snack to soccer on 5/10 or 5/17? Billy need’s to order this year’s team swimsuit by 5/10. 3. Hire a professional organizer. Mine is a mom of 4 kids the same age range as mine. They will help you declutter and set up systems that actually work for your family - not some idealized Instagram family. 4. You relentlessly train your whole family - Don’t put it down, put it away. A place for everything and everything in its place. You create routines for daily / weekly / monthly actions like getting out the door on weekday mornings. You post lists or have prominent white boards for kids to check off. 5. Get Alexa or Google Home assistants and use them to set alarms and reminders. Get multiple “Time Timers” to help people visualize when you need to leave the house or transition activities. 6. You coach, scaffold, and support your kids to strengthen their executive functioning skills. You don’t just tell them “unpack your backpack”. You teach them when a task needs to be done - is it on a schedule like every day after school or is there an observable indicator like the green light on the dishwasher? You teach them what does it mean to complete the task. How can the break it down into steps? “Unpacking your backpack means putting your water bottle and lunch box next to the sink, taking any papers and putting them in the “new mail” basket, and hanging it on the hook for tomorrow. On Wednesday it means collecting library books to return on Thursday. You teach them what a completed job done well looks like so they can eventually quality control themselves. You tell them what is next. “When you complete that task, you can play Minecraft for 20 minutes”. Trust me this last one is the hardest because as a person with ADHD I do not always want to do the right thing at the right time. I am not consistent when left to my own devices. Sometimes when I model these behaviors for my kids, I pretend I am acting in a play and following a script. BUT my kids are 7 and 9 and they are exceptionally responsible. We lost 1 hoodie the whole school year and we even got it back from Lost and Found. My kids each have a luggage tag on their backpack with a checklist by day of the week - mostly for me to ask them before we leave school pick-up, but they just do it themselves now. |
Anonymous
ADHD is genetic. Do you think it's a coincidence that four blood relatives share a diagnosis? |
Anonymous
|
To add on to my long response at 17:21
You say you have systems and no one uses them. Then they are not the right systems. You need to be flexible. My husband wanted us to use a joint calendar and that would mean I would have that calendar, my personal calendar, and my work calendar. I cannot handle that mentally. He refused to give in until I had a complete meltdown and couldn’t stop crying one night because I was extremely stressed with work emergencies and he was mad I forgot about Cub Scout meeting. Now everything is sent to both my home and work calendars. My work calendar has everything and that’s what shows on my Apple watch. To his NT brain, a joint calendar made sense. Lots of people use that system. But it does not work for me and he needed to change to accommodate my preferences if he wanted me to follow his system. |
Anonymous
Yes. Many. Maybe you should refrain from posting on topics you obviously know nothing about. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.751041/full |
Anonymous
Lining your pockets, huh? |
Anonymous
| I read an ADHD relationship book that was pretty spot on about what was happening and how to communicate around all the little conflicts. ADHD & Us is the one I read but I'm sure there are quite a few more out there. |
Anonymous
I’m sure there are quite a few. ADHD over diagnosis is big business. |
Anonymous
Maybe for college kids wanting Adderall but no one is going out there just to get every male in their family diagnosed. |
Anonymous
|
My advice is to reduce the number of toys and books that your kids own. Use the public library. Encourage your kids to play with disposable/recyclable objects. To bang on pans with a spoon. To color. We only needed about 10% of the toys we bought and received. I am still outplacing the lovingly selected toys since our local donation centers just throw out most of it.
Also think carefully about your plans for children's extracurriculars. We skipped doing youth soccer because it was just too much time commitment and we were pretty sure our kids would quit by high school. No need to add chaos for a few years for no real end goal when the kids aren't clamoring to do it. |
Anonymous
|
As a late diagnosed mom of two kids, one of whom has ADHD also, I urge you to lower your expectations of how things “should” be and to learn to laugh about as much of the foibles as you can.
Your household life and schedule is likely going to look and feel different than many of your peers. Whatever unique thing works for your family is what works, and it’s best to own it and embrace it. Yes, your DH should try meds. Stimulants wear off by the end of the day, so he’ll know if it benefits him or not with little risk. It’s worth a shot. For many ADHDers, it’s the first time we’ve ever felt our minds really still. Reading your post reminds me of how far we’ve come over time as a family. There’s progress to be made and a lot of help out there (including counselors who ***do*** know ADHD which I can’t recommend more highly). You (all) can do this! |
Anonymous
|
Oh man. My husband is very smart, mostly very good at his job and not diagnosed but after our child was diagnosed he was like wait……
But same, he thinks he’s managing fine because he has a good job and I do nearly everything else. It’s a constant struggle to decide how to handle because he will *sometimes * do things if prompted, but he really struggles to do more than one thing at a time so if work (which he enjoys) is busy, everything else falls to the side indefinitely. I don’t have good advice besides cut out what you can and make your own systems incredibly strong. I feel like I do the executive function of multiple people so even though I do not have ADHD, I rely on automation, reminders, prompts on my phone, anything to make things easier. If I have to do something during the work day myself and I learn of that task in the evening, I stop and email myself a task to my work account and don’t mark as read until it’s done. Literally everything is erased down in at least one place. I review each day’s to-do list carefully and transfer over anything that didn’t get done to the next day. I try to rely on my memory as little as possible. I don’t have the safety net of a second person so I’m the safety net. I do worry I’m going to burn out so I watch out for that. I think we are going to take the summer off from almost all activities aside from camp so that helps. I also try to give myself some grace. And when my husband is *interested* in a task he will do a great job. Basically anything for the house that is $$ or has a contract he is very into so I give those to him with just a couple reminders on my calendar to ensure they are taken care of. It’s very frustrating because he does like 1 percent of the tasks and puts a ton of effort into them and sometimes gives me a hard time about my “good enough” approach to almost everything (and teasing me about being way over informed and involved in things I think are important, like our kids medical care and therapy) when his approach is not something that works when you have to do more than one or two things. So it’s a balance of giving him tasks that align with his skill set and making sure no other really important balls are dropped. I outsource a few things: all lawn maintenance, groceries are delivered, deep cleaning is done by a housekeeper once a month. I struggle with managing people and few people we have tried to hire have met my husband’s standards so it’s hard to outsource more. I think I’ve found a handyman that seems good to do some of the small tasks around the house. So far we are mostly managing. To be honest, I would mind way less if my efforts were acknowledged or if he pursued help. But I feel like he buys into the cultural narrative that a man really just needs to have a good job and everything else he does is bonus points (even though I work and earn a significant fraction of our income). |
Anonymous
Look for someone now, OP. Have her work to train the kids in putting things away after school, etc. Have her do the kids laundry and put it away. Get an organizer to help you vastly purge and set up systems THAT ARE USED. Have her come back quarterly for more purging and tweaking of systems. Your role should be that of the household manager, outsource more tasks and minimize what needs to be done. Set up your home more like a preschool, cubbies for backpacks and hooks by the door. A whiteboard for a checklist by the door. Streamline and train the kids along with the nanny reinforcing. |
Anonymous
|
I liked the book How to ADHD - very practical advice.
And DH isn’t high functioning at home - he is using all his mental energy at work and has none for home, and that’s neither fair nor sustainable. |
Anonymous
|
Anything that lessens the burden on your executive functions is worth spending money on. Automate grocery delivery. Consider meal prep kids so DH or older kids can use to make meals easily.
You HAVE to get a new nanny now. The car situation you describe is training the kids to be the same way. You want and need the opposite of that, ASAP. It will make an enormous difference in quality of life and in beginning to strengthen the executive functions of your kids. Set up systems that work with what is already happening, makes it more likely they will be used. Have kids clean up before dinner, sing a cleanup song, set a timer and do it together. Build and reinforce routines, break down the steps and celebrate successes. Purge and simplify. |
Anonymous
|
I feel your pain OP. I have lived the same life only my Dad, sister, cousins and Uncles all have ADHD too. I've been surrounded by it my whole life, which is one of the reasons I didn't really recognize it in my DH until years into my marriage. My kids are now older but I like the suggestions mentioned above (also ignore the clueless posters who don't know that ADHD has a strong genetic component). A couple of additional thoughts/ideas:
1. Consider that your DH may never medicate. Mine has not and I stopped pushing for it because he really believed not being medicated was key to his career success. I couldn't argue otherwise as he has consistently earned a crap load of money. 2. Work with him to identify the tasks he's really good at and then have him own those tasks. My DH cooks dinner every single night--nonnegotiable. He also washes all of the laundry, does all of the Costco runs, and manages the "indoor and outdoor" parts of the house that involve the lawn and any regular maintenance. These tasks freed me up to do the tasks that require executive functioning like remembering to sign up the kids for camps, completing school paperwork, etc. 3. Double down on the advice above re streamlining your life as much as possible. My kids did one activity a season. There was no clutter in our home because I hired someone to come in 4x a year to create piles of stuff to throw away and give away. We also kept birthday and Christmas giving small because I was the only person in charge of managing all of the "stuff" and I knew I could only do it if we controlled the amount of stuff that entered the house. 4. I took a lot of time for myself. I did girl's trips, went to the gym, did Mom's Night Out etc. as much as I could. I needed time when I didn't have to be "on" and could just focus on myself. It's key to not burning out. 5. Don't add any more complications. Do not get a dog, a boat or a second house. Seriously! 6. Keep in mind that ADHD can improve over time. My husband's self regulation has gotten better and better over the years. 7. Go to marriage counseling. It helped us enormously. And, get a date night babysitter. I really needed to connect with my DH weekly in a space separate and apart from the chaos at home. It was a game changer. Hang in there! |