Chronically Ill Parenting: An ADHD Crash Course for My Kids

My girls and I are neurodivergent which means routines, alarms, and mental stimulation are totally vital. If you don’t, everything dissolves into chaos, and the kids transform into feral little street urchins. And for a long time, I absolutely kicked ass at managing it.

I used to keep the kids’ minds stimulated. On road trips, I had activities planned for every 30 minutes. Nothing crazy but they got a new mini coloring book, book to read, a small toy, or we played a new game. At home, we cooked together, played games or activities like indoor obstacle courses made out of masking tape, and set up our kiddie pool and sprinklers for them in the backyard. I used alarms and routines to get us everywhere in a timely manner.

I can’t do that anymore.

These days, my energy is a very finite currency. On my best days, I struggle with the bare-minimum basics like reminding them to brush their teeth or bathe, let alone providing them with curated, mind-stimulating activities. On really bad days, I can’t even get out of bed. Thankfully, those days aren’t as frequent since I stopped eating gluten (but seriously, why bread? Why?! *cries*).

Now, trying to get us out of the house is like herding kittens. The struggle is real. Now…I still use alarms but most of the routines are gone. We are often late and my brain completely drops school permission slips, party RSVPs, and birthday gifts into a void.

The Forced Sink-or-Swim Plot Twist

The mom-guilt from that shift can be a suffocating weight. But when I get low about how deeply unfair my illness is to my children, I have to stop and remind myself of a weird, comforting truth: In a kind of fucked up, throw-them-in-the-deep-end way… I am setting them up for success. Not the way I would have chosen but it is what it is.

As a parent, it’s my job to help my children become productive and participating members of society. So while, yes, it’s up to them to remember to hand me a school form to sign, or catch me when I’m actually functional to ask about a party, the reality is they are going to have ADHD for the rest of forever. In a really crappy-for-everyone way, my illness is forcing them to learn to work with their brains, not fight against them.

When I was a kid in the 80s, the medical approach to my neurodivergency was incredibly simple: “Here are some pills, now go be a good, quiet girl.” No one taught me a single coping skill or behavioral management strategy. Talking too loud? Stop it. Too hard to sit still? Do it anyways. Really want to participate in family conversations? No, sit still and be quiet. Notice a theme here? My parents took that “children should be seen and not heard” phrase a step further. They believed children shouldn’t be heard and preferably not even seen. Why did they choose to have a child? Your guess is as good as mine. I asked my mother once and all I got was every man should have a child. What the hell does that even mean? Not fucking clue.

Anyway, I didn’t actually learn how my own brain operated or how to manage it until college. Because of that massive gap (and many others) in my own life, my parenting style now is built entirely on open communication. I talk to my girls constantly about what works for me, what I’ve tried, what failed, and what I’ve researched. Every neurospicy brain is wired slightly differently, so we treat our household like a giant, judgment-free trial-and-error lab.

Our ADHD Toolkit

Over the years, we have built a creative but functional toolkit of strategies that keep our heads above water. Using my toolkit as an example, here is what you’ll find:

• Routines: I have routines for everything from showering to bedtime and habit stacking is my best friend. Routines aren’t about being “orderly” — they are anchors so your mind doesn’t have to think because even medicated I struggle with focus so I have learned to do things in a very strict unyielding order of operations. For example, my shower routine: Shampoo and rinse –>  Apply conditioner –> Wash body –> Wash face –> Rinse conditioner. If I get distracted, miss a step, or swap the order, my brain entirely resets and I will stand there completely blanking on whether I actually washed my hair. Actually, this one was really funny when my husband first started helping me shower. Totally threw me off because he doesn’t use an order. I wash my right arm then I wash my left arm and he would just start wherever. It’s chaos! Haha. We eventually compromised on mix of spontaneity and routine.
• Creative Reminders: I use alarms, sticky notes, and physically blocking my path with a thing that I need to remember. I’ve learned if things aren’t aggressively in my face, they don’t exist. Sticky notes don’t work on a pretty assigned space. I wish. Nope, they must be on the fridge exactly at eye level, on the car dashboard for post-school errands, or right on the back of a door so you cannot leave the room without staring at it. Sunny likes this one too. You’ll find them all over the house between the two of us. If I need to remember to take something with me when I leave, I can’t set the item to the side or on a nearby table, I won’t see it. The only way it works is to put it on the floor blocking the doorway so I have to move it to open the door.
• Bullet Journals: I tried for years to use standard planners but I’d always get bored eventually and just stop using it or lose it. It was so frustrating! Then I stumbled onto bullet journaling. It’s the perfect balance of creativity and organization. I show the girls that if a tool feels boring, you don’t force yourself to use it — you change the tool.
• Everything Has A Home: Another one is having a place for things. This one is so hard. Especially since my health declined because it only works if I always do it. Because dropping it somewhere random every now and again quickly becomes always and I lose stuff. I have spent so much money repurchasing items I’ve lost only to find them later. I have a specific spot for my purse, I keep my medications in the same spot, etc.

Art Of Parallel Play And Having Grace

There is a very persistent, annoying lie that you automatically grow out of ADHD when you reach adulthood. In my experience, it has only changed, not improved. The hyperactive, bouncy energy of my youth has settled into a horribly unfocused internal static. If I am not on my medication, I can’t even drive a car. There are simply too many inputs competing in a brain that refuses to filter them: noticing the stop sign, tracking the car creeping up on my left, and managing the kids playing loudly in the backseat all hit my central nervous system at the exact same time. It is completely overwhelming.

Over the last few years, the girls and I have had to get a bit creative due to my limited energy and find parallel play effective. We have learned the art of entertaining ourselves entirely separately, but in the same room. Sunny with play with her Barbies on the floor while I draw on my iPad and Tempest plays on her phone or the girls will play a game together while I watch TikTok on my phone. Or we watch something together or listen to an audiobook but without the pressure to constantly engage or interact.

We have also learned to have grace with one another. Because of my chronic pain, I unfortunately have days when the sensory overload hits a red-alert level and my own body is too overstimulating, much less the environment. I will inevitably snap when they get too loud. I apologize for being an ass and they try to quiet down. If they can’t sit still that day, they know they can go be kids anywhere else in the house and I’ll keep quiet. Mostly. And while this would not be my chosen method, this is another way I help them. ADHD, autism, and PMDD, all affect our nerves and emotions and we all have some combination thereof. This teaches them, it’s okay if you screw up. Nobody is perfect and I sure as hell don’t expect it. It’s how you handle the screw up that’s important. So my screwing up, catching myself, and and taking responsibility teaches them how to handle their own emotional moments.

Are my kids clones of me? Nope. But they are looking into a mirror of the same choppy waters they will have to navigate for the rest of their lives. And maybe, just maybe, watching their cracked teacup mom figure out how to manage her brain will give them the permission to be gentle with themselves when they grow up.

Do you practice parallel play with your kids, or do you have a completely unbending “order of operations” trap that keeps your brain anchored? Let me know your favorite neurospicy survival hacks below!

Remember folks, whatever you can do today is enough.