Growing and cultivating takes time and patience. Nothing grows overnight. You can’t plop a plant in your garden and hope to pluck the first fruit tomorrow. Growing organizing skills and time management, particularly in a child with ADHD, takes time and patience. There is no “miracle-gro” for these executive functioning skills, and progress looks different for each child. With all that said, I want to walk you through some of the “baby steps” along the way that have helped us in growing organizing skills in our kids and give you an honest look at where each of them are today.
Tips for Growing Organizing Skills in your ADHD homeschool
Before we head into the tips, let’s take a look at the specific challenges that we are trying to address. We can’t solve a problem unless we understand what that problem is, and a lot of times solutions for ADHD are offered without understanding what’s behind the struggle. My hope is that discussing these challenges will help you reframe what you are seeing in your child’s responses. It’s so easy to assume that a child is lazy or defiant or unmotivated, but like an iceberg, there is usually a whole lot going on below the surface. Take a look at these challenges and try to understand what the specific challenges might be for your child and how those challenges show up during your day.
Challenges Recognizing Time
Many kids and adults with ADHD are “time blind.” In other words, they have a difficult relationship with time and sensing time that has passed. All kids struggle to develop this skill early on, but for those with ADHD the struggle persists well into teens and adulthood. For instance, a transition that should take 10-15 minutes takes hours because of endless distraction or the inability to remember what comes next. On the other hand, you can also lose an ADHD child to a task they really enjoy, as they hyper-focus and have no sense of how much time they’ve been at it. Some people with ADHD see all of the details of a task all at once (details many of us might have missed) and become absolutely paralyzed at the enormity of a task that we had no idea could be so complicated. On the other hand, others have no concept of the details involved in a task and continuously underestimate what is involved, continually running behind and over scheduling themselves.
Then, there’s the similar battle of “now.” Those with ADHD often have two time tables: “now” and “not now.” Those tasks most urgent with the looming deadlines get top priority. Everything else—no matter its importance, no matter how much time and effort and planning might be involved, no matter how nice it might be to get a head start—everything else gets lumped into the “not now” category until it, too, becomes “now.” The result is that those with ADHD get trapped in a vicious cycle of reacting to the urgent.
Challenges with Planning Systems
Whether ADHD or not, some of us are organized and some of us are not. I think it’s often assumed that all people with ADHD are disorganized; though it would be true that all who have ADHD probably have a struggle with organizing certain areas of their lives. Some people excel at putting together efficient systems for organizing space, tasks, or information. Others do not. Even within ADHD, this is the case. My husband excels at spaces. He can organize a space and see all the series of tasks and details necessary to maintain that space. What is a struggle for him is planning that task and breaking it into smaller deadlines; for him, it’s easier to just work on the entire task “now.” On the other hand, I excel at information; from a conversation to a counseling session to a homeschool lesson plan, I know intuitively how to organize and arrange information. I’m also competent when it comes to planning and organizing time, managing what must be done in a day versus what can wait. But I struggle to organize and maintain a space. I leave things out; I lose things; I clutter everything around myself. For both of us, there is an area that comes easily and an area that takes immense mental energy.
My kids are no different. My youngest has always excelled at getting himself ready, thinking ahead to bring snacks, water, an activity, and other comforts. The oldest doesn’t think nearly that far ahead and leaves a trail of clutter wherever he’s been, but he can arrange instruments, sounds, notes and rhythms in a way that absolutely astounds me. He can arrange ideas and information for his writing quickly and effortlessly. My daughter is like my husband, good with spaces and design and systems. However, making adjustments, prioritizing what needs to be done and what can wait, discerning between the important, the urgent, and the unimportant are harder for her—and often paralyzingly overwhelming.
The result, we each settle into the spaces where our strengths are and help each other in our weaknesses. If I need my homeschool supplies arranged more efficiently or my pots and pans ordered more effectively, I turn to my husband or my daughter to help me. If my family needs time or information organized, I get them going. We don’t resent the fact that we are needed; and we don’t shame someone for not excelling in the same areas of our strengths. We work from the belief that God made each of us uniquely and gifted us in a way that requires we rely on others. We willingly learn from each other, and try to grow in the areas where we struggle.
ADHD doesn’t necessarily mean your child is terrible at organizing. But it may mean that there are certain areas of organization that are a legitimate challenge, and she may always need a bit of help in those areas.
Challenges with Transitioning and Adjusting
Transitioning and adjusting is another real challenge for many with ADHD. I think because putting a schedule or routine in place is often such a monumental effort that making changes or adjustments (the small, daily changes from interruptions and the larger changes from unexpected events) can send them into a tailspin. How do you revamp and recover?
Transitions involve making all of those judgement calls all over again. What tasks are priorities? How much time do I now have to work with? What can and can’t get done in my new timeframe? Where is the starting point for this new task? How do I get started? What are the details and small steps to this large task? Every transition requires the ADHD brain to think through all of the questions again, because organizing time and tasks often isn’t intuitive.
If your child is struggling and overwhelmed when something changes, be patient and understand her brain is probably overwhelmed. Walk her through the process of that transition and remind her that it will work out just as it has in past transitions.
Tips for growing organizing skills in the ADHD child
1. Use timers
This is often called the “pomodoro method.” Discuss with your child how long he thinks a math page will take him, or how long she thinks it will take to put one subject away and get the next one out. Set the timer. When it goes off, assess where the child is. Especially at the beginning, it’s likely the task won’t be anywhere near completed. Don’t get frustrated. Instead, talk over what went wrong, what the child is going to try differently this time, and reset the timer. Remember, this is a learning process. You might have to do this for quite awhile, but the end result is that eventually this will help your child have a better sense of time passing. For some, they may eventually be able to lose the timer. For others, they may need this pomodoro method the rest of their lives to help them notice when they’ve gotten distracted or to help them get motivated to start a task that feels overwhelming.
2. Give small chunks of independence
You will need to micro-manage much longer than you’d like. But allowing some chunks of independence can help grow your child in his self-management. Start very small. In other words, don’t start with the math page, start with the top section of five problems at the top of the math page. Start with studying spelling independently for ten minutes with a specific activity suggestion. Start with small 5 minute tasks and work your way up. Also, rather than teaching this new skill from an area of weakness, start with an area they already succeed in or a subject they already like. Build from strengths, and the strengths will eventually scaffold the weaknesses.
3. Model and Mentor
We naturally do this in so many other areas of life. We model and demonstrate how to brush teeth, comb hair, even speak. But in organization, we often just expect them to do it. If you want them to use a planner, model it for them for awhile and use the baby step of actually filling that planner in for them. The first step is for them to get used to reading a planner and checking it off. Next, let them fill in one subject themselves, and you fill in all the rest. Eventually, have them fill out most of it and you fill in one or two subjects. And by “eventually,” I mean each year give them a little more responsibility. If you sense that your child is ready and eager, already has that planner filled out before you get there, then move forward to the next baby step. If your child is having trouble, drop back a step or two. No shaming involved, just assure them that eventually they’ll get the hang of it.
{Also of note, I noticed that right around thirteen or ninth grade, many kids suddenly have a lot of trouble self-managing, kind of out of nowhere. Organized self-motivated young people suddenly are lost and distracted. If that’s your child right now, it’s okay. Go back a few steps; take back a little control. Eventually things will level back out and your kid will find his groove again.}
4. Listen
Have conversations with your kids and get feedback. Was this helpful? What could we do differently? What’s hard for you when we do this? Are you afraid of something (what are you afraid of)? Even ask hard questions about yourself. Does my attitude or tone of voice make you feel like you failed? Sometimes, failing to organize could be a fear of writing the wrong answer or hating how their handwriting looks in the planner. Having these conversations helps you to find the real problem and address it. It also validates their feelings and input. We are here to assist them in finding out how their brains work best. That means trial and error. Some things just won’t work, and that’s nobody’s fault. Let’s be scientists and discover what the solution is together.
For each of my kids, they have areas they are able to manage fairly well on their own, and areas where they need quite a bit of mentoring and accountability. Each of them have shown growth over the years, and at that same time, there are persistent areas of weakness that may always need someone else helping them. Which is another important area we’ve tried hard to teach and model: ask for help.
One caution here, your child’s age should not be the key evaluation of what your child is capable of handling. ADHD needs scaffolding and intentional building, no matter what age you start the process. Whether your child is five or fifteen, take the baby steps and encourage all progress. Also, medication can sometimes be immensely helpful in calming some of that static in the brain to allow them to focus on particular areas of growth. It’s not a cure-all, but it can be one helpful tool. In other instances, certain food sensitivities can create the static, and eliminating certain trouble-foods can be another helpful tool toward progress.
Bottom line, organizing ADHD is a life-long process of small incremental steps. It isn’t impossible, but it will often feel impossible, especially if you are comparing the progress to someone other than your own child. You don’t measure a child’s growth by how tall his peers are; you measure his growth against his last measurement.
No matter where you are in the journey of growing organizing skills in your kids, take time to see and celebrate the progress, even if that progress is one single small step.
