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[quote=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. [/quote]

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