Mom Hacks That Stick and Work with ADHD Transcript
Mom Hacks That Stick and Work with ADHD
JoAnn Crohn: [00:00:00] Welcome to the no guilt mom podcast. I am your host, JoAnn Crohn. And thank you for joining me for this little 15 minute nugget of an episode.
Today, we’re going to be talking about some mom hacks that stick and work with ADHD and shout out to Rhonda, who is an attendee in our mom ignited summit. She posted in there that she was looking for hacks like these. And I thought, oh my gosh, what a great podcast episode.
So, hi, Rhonda. And if you have not yet joined the mom ignited summit, what are you waiting for? It is a free ticket. I’m putting the link in the show notes, please come and join us.
Officially, it starts October 9th, but we are having a pre party in there with tons of games and prizes. Bingo. You’re missing a lot. You’re really missing a lot. I don’t want to put that FOMO in there or maybe I do because you need to come over to the summit.
[00:01:00] So enough about that, here at no guilt mom, our mission is to help you go from martyr to model.So that you’re the role model showing your kids what a fulfilled adult life looks like. And that’s you pursuing your own joy. Your own passions and maybe you need a little help figuring out what that is. And that’s why we’re here to help.
Today’s episode. I am super excited about because I have ADHD. I am a woman with ADHD where my symptoms have shown up ever since childhood. My ADHD is mixed a little bit with anxiety. I remember I was eight years old. My mom was late coming home from work and I just remember pacing up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. Looking around the corner of our street and waiting for her little white car to come around that corner. And that feeling in the pit of my stomach, that something bad had happened. When really, she was like five minutes late and had just stopped at the [00:02:00] grocery store before she came home.
But I have many instances of that in my life where this overwhelming emotion has just crippled me. Like I can’t think when I have that much anxiety. And I recently got diagnosed with ADHD. based a little on that anxiety and also learning more about how ADHD shows up in adult life. Honestly, it was always with me. I was, that girl shaming myself for not being able to pay attention in class. I would go every day into social studies or government in high school.
And I tell myself, okay, this is the day. This is the day I’m going to pay attention to the entire thing. And I sit down with the best of intentions. And all of a sudden, my mind goes somewhere else. Just like one little thing can spur a totally different thought in my head. And then I start going down this little rabbit hole. Where five, six minutes later, I’m back. And I’m like, oh shoot, I have missed [00:03:00] completely what the teacher’s talking about. And I have no idea how this relates to what they were talking about earlier.
And I struggled with that. All. Through school. maybe some of this sounds familiar to you, or maybe you already know that you have ADHD and you struggle with attention and you struggle with huge emotions. And maybe you have a challenge to stay organized. It’s common.
one other thing that is really, really interesting about ADHD It’s called rejection sensitive dysphoria. And it is this tendency to feel severe emotional pain. With feelings of failure or feelings of being rejected. And it can also manifest itself in rage, which I think has a lot to do with parenting. Because when you have a kid who is not listening to your requests, You feel [00:04:00] rejected quite a lot and that can. Also spur some pretty intense emotions.
now know with all of this, I’m not a therapist. I am a teacher first and foremost. I like to read, I like to research. I like to find out all I can about things.
And so for this episode, that is what this is going to be. This is my research. I am showing to you in a fun way, because we’re fun here at no guilt mom. And it’s also, me teaching and me just sharing what works for me. So you ready? Okay.
Here’s your first mom hack when you have ADHD. because it’s really hard to stay organized and it’s hard to stay focused. So the first thing I recommend, and I’m actually going to give you a rundown before I give you all five. You ready?
So number one. Buy experiences, not objects. Number two, use a timer [00:05:00] for the things that you don’t want to do. Number three body double. When you have to do some work, that’s a great strategy. Number four, put everything you can on autopilot. And I’m going to give you some specific examples of things you can put on autopilot. And then finally, number five, give yourself permission to drop what you can’t handle. Okay, you’re ready. Let’s get into this.
First of all, number one, buy experiences, not objects. Oh my goodness. So. Going to this whole tendency we have of getting distracted. I know that when I have a mess around me or I just have a lot of stuff, I need to sort through be it, the mail, be it. I just went to a conference and I have this huge pile of swag to sort through. I, I don’t do well. I don’t do well at all. Like so much, in fact that when I go to conferences lately, I don’t get the swag. I’m like, Hmm. That could [00:06:00] stay right there. We don’t need that. Because the mere thought of making a decision with all that completely overwhelms my brain.
And also when I have that stuff, then I have to go and organize it and I’m not good at organization. I lose interest like halfway through the project I’m working on and would rather go and put my attention on something else. So this goes a lot with kids stuff in particular as well, because in our family, I don’t want to buy my kids a lot of toys. If I have to spend my time organizing, it’s not going to happen. Like everything has to go in a box. And that’s why we tend to buy experiences instead of stuff, it works better because you have those memories and don’t think that you need to make a photo album of all those memories. Don’t go down that rabbit hole. I’ve been there. You can just have the memory in your head and you don’t have to deal with [00:07:00] any of this stuff to sort through. You can use this for gifts for other people to buy them a ticket to the zoo, or plan an outing at or a restaurant and invite them to come along. It is so much better for your brain and then you have less stuff to deal with as well.
So that’s number one. Buy experiences, not objects.
Number two. Use a timer for those things you don’t want to do. So say you do have a big organizing job in front of you. You brought a lot of stuff home. Maybe you went to Costco, you saw a lot of good deals. You had to bring ’em. And now you have to sort through it all. And you don’t want to it’s way too overwhelming that pile of stuff. Just sitting on your counter, you look at it, you’re like, mm, Nope, you turn the other direction and you put on Netflix. I’m totally with you. I am. I’m totally with you there.
So this is a strategy that I’ve taught my kids as well, who also tend to get [00:08:00] overwhelmed too. And that’s using a timer for the things you don’t want to do. And how this typically looks is I use this when I was writing my books. It’s the only way I got through it. I would set a timer for 25 minutes. And in my brain, I’m like, well, I will sit and write for 25 minutes. And if only garbage comes out, fine, only garbage comes out, but I’m not going to spend any more time than that. We’ll reassess. Then I would then set the timer. I would probably be looking at my screen for maybe 30 seconds to a minute.
And then I would just start typing. And stuff came out. And some of that stuff was good and usable. And I just wrote the book like that in little 25 minute segments. That was the only way I could focus. And that was the only way I could. Really finish a big project like that.
So you can use a timer for things around your house, too. My son uses a timer when we tell him to clean his room [00:09:00] just last night. Uh, we are going to go to fro-yo. And he was asking for it and he added this, He said, Hey, if I cleaned my room by myself, can we get fro-yo? And he said that and I’m like, Ooh, this gets me out of helping clean the room. Yes. Yes, let’s do that. So he said, okay, I’m just going to set a timer for 15 minutes and see how much I can get done. And the kid is 10.
He did it. He set a timer and the room was cleaned. I got fro-yo, too.. It was a win win. So use that time or teach your kids to use a timer for the things that you don’t want to do.
Number three. Body doubling. Oh my goodness. Have you heard of this strategy? This is when you have to work on a project, maybe it is for work. Maybe it is decluttering. And all you do is you just have another person in the room doing the exact same thing. You are. And that [00:10:00] helps you focus. I don’t know the science behind it, but I can tell you that it is a strategy that helps me immensely. We use it in our balance group as well for time-blocking where we sit down every Friday for 20 minutes and plan out our weekly calendar for the next week, we do it on a zoom call. And so that is body doubling. It actually helps you stay focused and more productive. So see how you can use body doubling in your life as well. And after this break, we’re going to get into our next tip about putting everything on autopilot.
So we already went through the first three buy experiences, not objects, use a timer for things you don’t want to do. And body doubling the fourth one is put everything you can on autopilot. This is so your brain doesn’t get overwhelmed, trying to make a [00:11:00] multitude of decisions. So some things that I put on autopilot, I have my wardrobe. My clothing, my outfits on autopilot, meaning that I usually just buy shirts and jeans. And that’s what I wear. I wear a cute little top and I wear a pair of jeans or this one’s a good one. Jumpsuits. Jumpsuits are amazing. And they work in a professional environment as well. So that is one way I’ve automated. And put my life on autopilot.
Another way is eating. I eat the same thing basically every day for breakfast. It’s either overnight oatmeal or frozen Eggo waffles with some fruit on it.
For lunch, we use this service called factor, which is pre-prepared meals. So it’s kind of like someone doing meal prepping for you, but it’s an online company and they ship it. And they’re really yummy, really yummy, but they make a great quick lunch as well. It’s [00:12:00] very filling. And then meal planning. I do the meal planning for dinners, and I just recycle. I recycle meal after meal. We have a few meals in our house. We have hamburgers, which I will probably gonna make tonight. Honestly. and it’s just like a Patty that we buy from the grocery store and I put it on the grill and I’m like done. We have Chile. We have burrito bowls where I mix up some ground beef with taco seasoning. I make some rice and then we put all the toppings, like a burrito on it. It’s really good for our kids because they don’t like the same ingredients we use. They get to customize and we buy Fritos with it. So that’s another selling point of burrito bowls.
So see how you can put your meal planning on autopilot by just having these really easy meals that you can rotate through and not have to give a second thought to.
And number five: is to give yourself permission to drop what you can’t handle. [00:13:00] Give yourself that permission, you don’t have to do everything. You’re not meant to do everything in our society. Women are kind of forced into this caregiving role. Like that’s what’s expected of us. We are expected to take care of people, which is the bias our society has. So all this pressure you feel is just our cultural norms. Now doesn’t mean that we have to stick to those cultural norms. No, and that’s why I want to make you very, very aware of them.
In fact, those cultural norms are causing women a fair amount of stress because it makes us think we do have to do it all. We have to work a full-time job and we have to fulfill all these household duties while taking care of our kids. And it’s just way too much. So give yourself permission to drop those things that, and I don’t want to say the ones you can handle, because I think we’re very competent.
We can handle [00:14:00] a lot. More like the things you just don’t like to do. Don’t feel guilty about dropping those
for me. One of them’s cleaning. We have a wonderful cleaner who comes to our house every two weeks. I do not clean at all. And, I would also say neither does my husband. We are partnered in that. We don’t like cleaning. So we have outsourced that and allow that to happen. Now, did I feel really guilty for that at first? Yes, I did. We didn’t have a cleaner growing up. Like that was a pretty, oh, indulgent thing. I think that would be the word.
And my mom did it all and I saw my mom do it all and it was awful on her. you can give it up. You can give up cleaning. If you are in a place where you can get help with that, please give it up.
also. If you ever feel overstimulated, feel free to say no to events and parties where you know that’ll happen.[00:15:00] because your brain, especially when you have ADHD, is so special, but it also takes in so much information. I am one of those people who I’m watching a movie. And if they make a mistake in the cut where say a character has been eating a piece of pie, I’m the first to notice if that pie magically reappears, like if a piece magically reappears in the next scene. and it takes me completely out of the movie just because that is what our brains are designed to do.
When we have ADHD, we notice everything. And that. Can like have a companion with overstimulation. So feel free to say no to those things. I went to a podcast conference. It was Podcast Movement. And they had the conference in this really large convention center room. And there were seven stages in that room at one time. So that when you went to listen to one talk, you can overhear all of the noise in [00:16:00] the background. By noon. I was done. I could not handle anyone else. I was feeling rageful. That should be a word. I was feeling rageful and I knew it was because I was overstimulated. So when you feel like you’re overstimulated, feel free. To tap yourself out
now, honestly, if you have younger children that may be harder to do. It can still happen though? I used to do it with my son. I would just play a video or gosh, what he liked to watch Peppa pig, probably I’d put on Peppa pig. And then I’d go into the bathroom with the door open so that I could hear him just to get a break from all the noise.
So that is five mom hacks for you. That work with ADHD by experiences, not objects as much as you can. Use a timer for the things you don’t want to do so that you can get them done in little chunks. Body double with someone else, be it through a screen or right there in [00:17:00] person. Put everything you can on autopilot. And then give yourself permission to drop what you don’t want to handle and let yourself be free of it. You have to practice that the guilt still stays it lingers, but the more you practice dropping those things, the easier it will become. I promise you. So remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you and I’ll talk to you later.
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