All over TikTok, Insta, Facebook, well anywhere you look nowadays there is so much stuff around ADHD and how to “manage” you life, your habits and your planning, but do they really help or give you practical steps how to implement change?
Change is made (especially with an ADHD brain) in small steps, with small wins and small movement forward. This is because the ADHD brain will have a field day with lots of new and exciting things to make things “better” and “managed” but after a couple of days or sometimes weeks we fall off the band wagon. Because our brains either go, “nah, too hard, can’t do this” or “not exciting anymore, not interested”.
Change is made by knowing ourselves and knowing our routines that we have already established, we do have them, even though we think we don’t and think that our lives are all over the place, but in actual fact once we figure out what we do regularly and routinely because our brain has gone with the best, easiest (for us) and most comfortable option we have actually got a routine.
Do you………first thing you do when you get up (at whatever time it is) make a cup of coffee or tea? Do you shower a particular way or at a particular time of day? I do, at night because I hate the feeling of getting dressed for the day while wet.
We all have routines that we have in place to satisfy our sensory needs, our ‘icks’, the way things need to be so we can just survive.
So, lets take that and work with it……..
Adding in new habits doesn’t mean throwing out everything and starting fresh, cause that doesn’t work for more than a couple of days, new habits means finding out our routines, finding out our why’s and then adding things in, tricking our brain almost into thinking that we are doing things completely normally just with one or two LITTLE things added in.
First:
Brain dump/Mind map you!!! Get a big piece of paper and work out your normal routine. This is you, this is how you function. Ok it’s not that great sometimes and not really serving you well most of the time, but that’s why we’re doing this, right?? Time has come to celebrate you and your stuff!!!
I also have an ADHD get to know yourself worksheet here
Add in all the why’s, why don’t you have a shower in the morning? What stops you getting out of bed? What means that you forget things? What are your ‘icks’? whatever it is about you and your routines, write it down, get it out of your head, some of it might be interesting!!
Then:
Put it on a weekly template (available here) so that you can see what your week actually looks like in real time. Even if this only goes on your fridge or somewhere you can see it, just as a reminder without changing anything to begin with, seeing it regularly can help facilitate change!!!
REALLY GOOD OPTION TO GET YOUR TEEN INVOLVED IN THIS TOO, HELP THEM TO FIGURE OUT THEIR WHY, THEIR ROUTINE, WHERE AND HOW THEY ARE COMFORTABLE. START THOSE CONVERSATIONS.
Next:
Start thinking about ways to make little changes, little things to add in that doesn’t make a dent in what you are doing already……remember, trick your brain.
Here are some options for practical change;
Meds – having meds in an area that you can see straight away somewhere in your morning routine, object permanence is the thing to remember – next to the coffee machine, on the fridge (check out my cool new gadget that I’m using for me and the teenager HERE) this also means more likely to remember what’s in the fridge!, next to your toothbrush (two birds with one stone, if you have teeth brushing sorted of course).
Food – Dunch, you’ve seen the ads, make enough for lunch the night before, for me it means that I actually want to eat it the next day (if I meal prep I get sick of my choices after a couple of days), so when you are shopping make sure that when you are cooking you have extra for lunches.
Find the cool lunchbox for yourself – I know it seems weird – but my salad container that I take to work (or work from home) I love and love filling with salad for lunches.
Toiletries/Self Care – If remembering is the issue, put things in a number of different places around the house to remind you to do this (worked so well with my 15yo and remembering to brush his teeth), a station by the coffee machine again (no one is looking or cares!), a station by the front door so that it’s there as you leave the house, a station in your car, wherever you think might be a good place to remember. Trial it out and see what works!!!
Launch Pad – having a spot somewhere by the door that you leave by that has everything that you might need, or extra’s of those things, chargers, charging boxes, wipes, deodorant, keys, water bottle, box of snacks, undies, towel, whatever this looks like for you. This again has been a game changer in my house.
Whiteboard – This belongs in my house again right by the front door, I write on it as my week takes shape, my boy writes on which day he wants to cook dinner and what he wants to cook, we both put on whatever activities we have on that week and it’s a reminder for the things we do together or appointments that I have made for him (and me). This takes a bit of getting used to and sometimes I’m writing stuff on as I walk out the door but it so helps with time management both for me and him and I don’t have to nag nearly as much.
Work/Home:
This comes back to your brain dump/mind map. When is your best time of the day? When does your brain do the best functioning? How does that fit around your current schedule.
Can you change your schedule at all to suit your brain?? Work from home more days?? (This wouldn’t work for me as I’m more productive at the office where the washing and the gardening and everything else is not screaming at me).
If you can’t change your schedule, can you accommodate some of those sensory things that makes your productive brain stop, makes your frustration increase, etc?
Noise cancelling headphones at work (if you need headphones that don’t stand out check out my shop for other options)
Asking to work in a dark office for some tasks or on particular days that you are not functioning as well as normal
Moving your desk so that it doesn’t face out a window or putting something over the window at eye height,
Turning your emails off until a particular time of day so that you can have the first hour scheduling your day (this has worked wonders for me).
Time blocking, after you have your weekly template, this is so much easier to do.
Having a jotter pad with you open so you can draw or doodle while on the phone or doing a difficult task, taking a puzzle book or whatever works for you (not phone based a BOOK) to work with you (try it, game changer, works really well for High School students too who struggle to stay still).
Speaking to whoever it is that you might need accommodations from, you never know until you ask!!
And remember,
This is YOU!!! And YOU doing YOU, no one looking over your shoulder, no one telling you how you are supposed to do anything, you make the rules, you make the routines, you make it work.
And……. We don’t all have great days all the time. So try and think about it like this, a system that works well for ADHD kids at school and at home is the traffic light method of emotional regulation right….
So GREEN….. days that you feel really good, things are going well, or you have a pretty clear schedule, it’s an “easy” day, these are the days to try and implement some of the small changes.
YELLOW…….not such a great day…. You know you are going to be rushed or got a lot on, need some accommodations to get you through your day, need those headphones, need to take tea out of the freezer or have leftovers or cook something easy that just gets everyone fed with as little drama and chaos as possible.
RED…… seriously crap day….. give yourself some slack, put those pain in the ass tasks off till another day (where you can), have tomato on toast for tea (my fav right now), kids can have noodles (they won't die), not the day to exercise or plan to do anything extra, if you can, start again tomorrow without any guilt. NOT THE END OF THE WORLD AND NO ONE IS WATCHING!!!