A little flighty, are we?
Embarrassed around other parents who obviously have it together?
ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life (2002, Routledge) is a great handbook for those of us who can't even count the many ways inattention has interfered with the smooth functioning of our households and cost us precious time and energy. This book was presented to me by a client staying home with several children. She boasted a graduate degree and the associated dreams, but the usual ADD medications had done little for her. This book, however, had made a difference.
The authors of ADD-Friendly Ways did several things right.
First, they narrowed down the problems to tackle to just the most common areas of concern for ADD parents: for example, how to make to-do lists, making school lunches efficiently, and letting go of unrealistic housekeeping ambitions when you work outside the home (and most parents do work outside the home now.)
Second, they remind you not to try to change too many things too quickly, lest you burn out. Every single new habit takes two to three weeks to take root, after all.
And third, they recommend working with your inattentiveness rather than against it. For example, if there's something you forgot to put on your to-do list, stop and put it on right then while you are thinking of it, even if it isn't convenient. You are less likely to lose track of it, and won't spend unnecessary mental energy trying to remember what you wanted to write down later.
Finally, three other problem areas are covered very pragmatically, while identifying the ADD ways of thinking that create and sustain them: packratting, overcommitment, and paperwork avoidance. When to get friend(s) or family to help, versus hiring a professional organizer, is also usefully covered.
Co-authors Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau, Ph.D. are, respectively, a professional organizer and a psychologist. They have written a guide to sustainable lifestyle changes for adults with ADD that can not only make the parenting era of life easier, but increase confidence for midlife functioning and beyond.
I would like to say at this point that as a therapist, I am currently rather ambivalent about the phenomena associated with ADD being classified together as a medical disorder, per se. I see more and more in my practice that a certain temperament and personality style tends to be associated with these phenomena, generally speaking (my favorite anthropologist, Helen Fisher, refers to such people as Negotiators.) Inattentive people have a lot of positive experiences/qualities associated with them (imagination, multitasking capacity and generosity are just a few examples.) Nonetheless, inattention can certainly impair someone in a given context, and many individuals do benefit from the medications designed to treat it.
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