Husband is just so slow
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
My husband is great and is a hard worker. He isn’t lazy. But OMG he’s the slowest person on Earth. He loses track of time.
-every road trip (both sets of parents live about 4-5 hours away) consists of me packing for myself and 3 kids, packing the car, loading the kids up and then we wait in the car still for about 30 min for Dh to make his coffee and poop. Actually I’m not even sure what he’s doing. - this was his morning to make breakfast for the kids. Kids are dying by 9am but he doesn’t feed them until 11am -at 11:30 he says he’s taking the younger two to an activity. Nope. It’s 12:30 now and they’ve been dressed for an hour. The toddler will need to nap soon, so he probably can’t do the activity now. Or he’ll drag the toddler out who is a mess by 1:30. Every day is like this. It’s like one never ending stream of slowness. How do I fix this? Do I just go insane? Turn into the world’s biggest nag? I’m so sick of dealing with cranky kids who get promised things and then instead have to do the activity during their nap times. If he were on ADHD meds would this change? |
Anonymous
|
Sounds like adhd to me.
|
Anonymous
| Does he have adhd? He sounds like my DH and I swear it is undiagnosed adhd, poor exec functioning skills. He cooked dinner last night - was supposed to be for 6:30, we ate at 8:30. You can manage his timetable on most things by just moving everything up. If we need to leave by 7, I tell him we need to leave at 6:30. If he is going to take kids somewhere I tell him that the express line closes at 12, or the tickets sell out at 11, or that I think Santa is only going there to be there until 3. Don’t drive yourself nuts. Just manage him differently. |
Anonymous
| You just go insane. I have. |
Anonymous
| He’s just lazy and not invested in family life. Sorry OP. |
Anonymous
|
Inattentive ADHD, slow processing speed, poor executive function.
My son has been diagnosed since elementary and he needs to work twice as hard to be less productive than the average. However since he has a high IQ and is perfectionist, what he does achieve is high quality work. He is very aware of his deficits. He’s now in college, and is destined to be a daydreaming, analytical professor/researcher type. |
Anonymous
|
This is my DH. While everyone else gets ready to go, he acts like he’s ready and sits by the door in sweatpants, cross-legged and staring at his phone. When it’s time to go, he starts to get ready. Every time.
I can’t take a walk with DH unless I’m in the mood to amble at a pace slower than a toddler. Yes, stopping to smell the roses is lovely, but sometimes you don’t need to smell every damn rose and inspect every green leaf and fawn over every shiny beetle. He’s also completely unrealistic (overly optimistic ?) about how long something will take. His parents live 30 minutes away if traffic is good, which means they are 45-60 minutes away most days. He tells them we’ll be there by 1, but he tells them this at 12:30 when he’s still sweaty from his workout and has a load of laundry in the washing machine. |
Anonymous
| Do adhd meds change this? Will they speed people up? Or make them not lose track of time? I don’t know much about them |
Anonymous
|
That is why it is called "mental load" of women. My DH is amazing at work. But, he is incapable of doing things correctly, on time, completely at home.
So, I make the things happen at home and instruct him to do it. I switch on and off between being a loving wife and a strict manager. It is ok. Things get done. I appreciate what he is capable of doing. He is a loving dad and loyal husband, a compassionate human being and his moral compass is on point. BTW - having 3 kids is a different ballgame so most of your vent is due to having 3 children. The sane number of children is 2. Please pass this PSA along. |
Anonymous
Op here. I don’t think this is it. It’s not the mental load. I need him to physically be faster, not to remember to buy a birthday gift. We don’t find 3 kids more challenging than 2. |
Anonymous
|
Some people are just slow and time blind. Myself included, except I have ptsd from being late for things that really should not have been late for so I am expend great energy making sure I’m not late by using all sorts of strategies. I set timers, I use a schedule and I put in all events for at least 15mins earlier than the start time or I put it in for the time that I need to start heading out the door for the event. And I try to prepare well in advance.
Tell him a time that is at least 30mins before actual departure time. |
Anonymous
+1. Realize he doesn't want to be like this and consider helping him get help. Yes, you will have to help him get help because tasks like that are so impossible for those of us with ADHD. It took me 3 years to get an evaluation for myself and it only happened because I finally found a place where I could make an appointment online. |
Anonymous
I agree. Presumably he meets deadlines at work and shows up to meetings on time? |
Anonymous
| My husband is exactly as you've described. I could have written your post almost to the detail. It's an ADHD executive function issue. |
Anonymous
It’s overscheduling to pack the car to drive to visit grandparents? OK. This is alway something the lazy-*ss men try to claim: “I don’t shirk anything- you’re just a crazy nag doing totally unnecessary things.” The sad this is that these dudes are so dependent on women to organize their emotional lives that they probably would completely fail to build any relationships for their kids left to their own devices. |