How to cope when your entire family has ADHD
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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! |
Anonymous
| Your number one focus should be getting your husband treatment, and when they are old enough, your children as well. Medication will be life changing but get started quickly because finding the right type of medication can take time. Your children could benefit from executive function coaching and anger management and social skills therapy which can help with emotional dysregulation of adhd. |
Anonymous
My spouse had the same concern and thank goodness he changed his mind. Medication helped him perform even better than he had been. Remind him that stimulant medications, which are highly effective, are short acting. Can he try it for just a couple weeks? If he finds that they “impair” his functionality then he can quit. There’s no lingering side effects to worry about. He doesn’t have anything to lose by trying. |
Anonymous
Moron. |
Anonymous
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I have ADHD and it's getting worse post kids and in perimenopause. Your DH needs to get medicated and you both need to read a ton about ADHD and what works and what doesn't.
Also, don't "hire an organizer"... that's not going to help. If you hire help, hire someone who knows a lot about ADHD, a coach or a therapist or something. No amount of organizing is going to help if the person doesn't understand how ADHD brains work. Also, let your DH take on all the things he hates the least. Sorry if this sucks for you, but the only way he will be able to do it is if it's not incredibly painful for him to do it. RE the kids, I have found that listening to audiobooks while doing stuff (showering, brushing teeth, chores for the kids) is super helpful because their brains are bored and understimulated so you need to occupy that part of it. Audiobooks are also good for giving me peaceful afternoons with our 2 ADHD kids because they listen and simultaneously work on something else instead of bothering me because they are bored. It's like it turns the static off in our brains. |
Anonymous
This is the key. If DH is high functioning at work, that means he has the intelligence to figure out how he can also be high functioning at home. He may implement that in a way that is different than yours (i.e., using different systems) and that is fine -- let him do whatever it is that gets you to the end goal. Your systems obviously aren't working, and that's what needs to happen here. Your kids will probably end up following either your system or his, or some combo of both. |