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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You can read what I wrote about this in the post about whether ADHD gets worse as you age, but here is a summary of what I’ve done.

First, I made clear this was an issue during dating and that I expected him to be on time when something was really important to me. He showed me during dating that he could improve. I literally told him when we planned a trip to Europe, “I am leaving my apartment at x time to be at the airport. If you are not there, I will leave and get on the plane without you and have a wonderful trip.” I 100% meant it. He was on time and I knew after that trip we would probably marry.

Second, while he would totally say “oh yeah, I am time blind”, he knows this is a weakness. He has used technology to really help him. He lives and dies by his calendar reminders. If he had refused to acknowledge this as an issue while dating, we would not have dates that long. If he started to pretend now that it wasn’t an issue, I would lose my mind.

Third, I’ve had to learn to let go of my own anxiety about being late for stuff that isn’t actually that important to me. He is the one that thinks goi long to church and seeing his family are priorities more than me so I need to stop caring about lateness for things that are not important to me. When dating this turned into, “you need to manage my expectations, don’t tell me you will pick me up at 6:30 for me to then be super pissed when I’m waiting at 6:45.” Tell me “let’s have dinner Tuesday night, I will call you when I’m in my car so you know I’m 45 minutes away.”

Fourth, I do more of the mental load, but he does a TON of the physical stuff in return. He gets the kids to most appointments, does the laundry, changes diapers, etc.

Fifth, I am ok trying to help him think through a schedule.
So, “hey dude, tomorrow we need to leave at 10am, but x, y and z have to get done. Let’s talk through what time we need to set the alarm for all that to get done.” And then I scoff when he claims he can be ready in 20 minutes and remind him that he is never, ever ready in less than 45 minutes. My kid chimes in that I’m totally right and he grimaces and agrees to get up earlier.

Sixth, we mostly try to have a sense of humor about our differences although this will always pop up from time to time as an area of contention.  Him being late drives me crazy, me rushing him drives him crazy. But we have tons of other things we love about each other.[/quote]

Ugh — I meant he would “not” actually say he is time blind. Reading your post again, on the bedtime stuff, it gets easier once they are older and bedtime being 15-30 minutes later isn’t that big of a deal. That said, I also had to let go of some of my rigidity about bedtime when they were little so I didn’t murder him. On meal times, our family just doesn’t eat meals together. We have all kinds of other family time, but sitting together for a meal isn’t actually important to either of us. Some of this is because we have a kid with profound special needs so that vision was just never going to happen — but it hasn’t been the end of the world.[/quote]

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