Daily Excerpt: Andrew's Awesome Adventures with His ADHD Brain (Wilcox): Some Days I Need to Seek Shelter from the Tornado

 

Excerpt from Andrew's Awesome Adventures with His ADHD Brain

Some Days I Need to Seek Shelter from the Tornado

 

I wouldn’t characterize myself as a “neat freak” although my husband and children would say otherwise. Having a child with ADHD whose idea of organization is a big pile on the floor has been a bit of a challenge for me. Andrew loves to go to flea markets and shop for antiques, and his “treasures” always seem to end up thrown on a miscellaneous pile shoved into a corner on the floor of his bedroom.

One weekend I mentioned to Andrew we were going to clean out his room, which was getting too cluttered with all his collections. Andrew’s response to me was “Mom, why are we bothering to clean up my room? It’s going to stay organized for all of ten minutes. You know me; I’m not organized.”

Although this made me chuckle, Andrew’s statement was true. The struggle with organization for children with ADHD stems from their executive function deficits. Creating and maintaining an organizational system requires planning, initiating the task for knowing what needs to be organized, and finding a place for something based on how often it is used. These complex processes require working memory and are a challenge for an ADHD brain. When Andrew is supposed to be cleaning up his room, I usually find him surrounded by a bigger mess on his floor, playing with some treasure he misplaced a month ago.

I set out on the task of helping Andrew to become more organized and along the way found out that my organization techniques don’t always work for an ADHD brain. I love my bins and baskets. Unfortunately, I am the only one in my family who feels this way. In fact, my husband rejoices every time I get rid of a basket. Andrew, on the other hand, is a throw-it-on- the-floor-table-or-countertop type of organizer. He also lives in a constant state of near-hording and never wants to get rid of anything, which presents another challenge to being organized. After several failed attempts to help Andrew be more organized, I realized I needed to enlist Andrew’s help to find a solution that works for him and not one that works for me. For example, Andrew will never put something away in a bin and then put the bin on a shelf; that involves working memory. The bin will be left open on the floor for weeks. The contents of the bin will be emptied out on the floor and left there for the dog to chew on, or, if stacked on some shelf, the bin and its contents will be forgotten completely.

As Andrew progressed in school, there came a point, around 6^th grade, when he had so many assignments to keep track of his grades began to suffer. I worried about Andrew missing out on opportunities because his grades were low and also worried his teachers may not know his capabilities. According to a 2016 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 90% of students with ADHD receive classroom accommodations in school. However, most children with ADHD are not in special education programs, and their teachers may know little about ADHD behaviors.

Andrew and I argue at least once a week about his school folder, which is crammed with so many papers it is bursting at the seams and ripped in half. I am usually trying to get him to locate a missing assignment for school or instructions for a school project. After one such argument, I finally had had enough; it was time to contain Andrew’s chaos. His disorganization was resulting in failing grades due to incomplete work that was being stuffed in the folder and forgotten. If Andrew couldn’t keep track of his schoolwork in middle school, how was he ever going to survive the rigorous course load in high school? I knew Andrew was more capable than his grades reflected and had every intention of getting his work done, but his disorganized ADHD brain sometimes derailed him along the way. It was time to come up with a solution.

Children with ADHD immediately respond to every new stimulus around them, which leads to their attention shifting from something less desirable, like organizing a school folder, to a more enjoyable activity, like riding a bike outside on a sunny day. In order to help Andrew be more organized, we had to help his working memory. The less Andrew’s working memory needs to work and remember on its own, the more successful he will be.

Ways to help working memory can include writing down reminders for what needs to be done, giving a to-do item a deadline by writing it on a calendar, breaking down a large task into several smaller ones, and setting a certain amount of time to focus on completing a task. Andrew and I came up with a plan for him to clean out his folder once a week on the same day. We have also used the same plan for cleaning up his crafting supplies and his bedroom. Since organizing the craft table and the bedroom are larger, and more overwhelming, tasks than cleaning out his school folder, we have added additional strategies to help Andrew complete these chores. Simply telling Andrew it’s time to clean up is like telling someone who builds model rockets to go and build an actual rocket to get someone to Mars; they wouldn’t know where to start, and the task would be very daunting. So, to break down the task for Andrew, I give him a very specific list of what needs to be done, for example:

1. Pick up your clothes from the floor and put them in the hamper.

2. Clean off the dresser.

3. Make the bed.

The list has a maximum of five items; otherwise, there are too many for him to complete. Andrew uses a timer and sets a duration of time for cleaning up, followed by a shorter duration of time for a break. During the break, Andrew can do an activity of his choosing. Setting a timer helps with time management, which is another struggle for children with ADHD, and is useful for other tasks, like completing homework assignments. Of course, there is no guarantee the homework will be turned in on time and not end up in the abyss of papers in a folder that is ready to explode.

 I have learned it takes a monumental amount of patience, an open mind, and a lot of trial and error to find strategies to help Andrew’s ADHD brain to be organized. Typical of ADHD kids, a strategy may work for a while, then become boring when the novelty of the new strategy wears off. However, a flutter of excitement goes through me every time I find Andrew has put his socks in the hamper, and I try not to notice the pile of underwear on the floor.

For more posts about the Wilcoxes and their book, click HERE.

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