When you and your child both have ADHD, getting out of the house in the morning can feel like a special kind of hell.
Nobody wants to get up. Everyone gets distracted. Essential items are never where you expect them to be. And just as you finally get everyone out of the house, you realise you’ve forgotten the PE kit.
Why is something as simple as getting everyone washed, dressed, breakfasted and out of the house with coats and shoes so bloody difficult? Everyone else seems to manage it.
Well, the truth is, not everyone else is managing a household with ADHD. And there are a few quirks of ADHD brains that make mornings particularly tricky.
1. 7am feels like midnight
Many people with ADHD struggle to switch off at night, which means that when most people are fast asleep we don’t feel in the slightest bit sleepy.
There are several reasons why this can be, but one potential cause is that some people with ADHD experience a delayed sleep phase, which means their internal body clock runs later than conventional school and work schedules. As a result, when the alarm goes off in the morning, your brain may still be expecting several more hours of sleep. Which means everyone wants to go back to bed, rather than launch into a time-pressured, multi-step routine.
2. Transitions are hard
ADHD affects the brain systems involved in attention, motivation and task-switching which makes the hour between waking and leaving the house a total minefield for an ADHD family.
When you’re meant to be getting dressed, you get distracted by your WhatsApp messages. Meanwhile, no matter how many times you tell your children to brush their teeth or get their school bags ready, you just can’t seem to get them moving.
3. Nobody knows what time it is!
ADHD brains experience something often called time blindness, which basically means people with ADHD can find it difficult to judge how long something takes or keep track of how much time is passing.
This is why when there’s just 10 minutes until you’ve got to leave, you quickly check your emails and take out the bins, while somewhere down the road your bus is pulling away from the curb.
Making ADHD mornings easier
The good news is that once you understand what’s tripping you up, you can start designing your mornings around it.
For me, the biggest shift has been trying to make the morning require as little thinking, remembering and decision-making as possible. The fewer things an already sleepy, distractible ADHD brain has to hold in its head at 7am, the better.
If mornings are a particular flashpoint in your house, I go into much more detail in ADHD Mum, ADHD Kid about the practical strategies we use to get everyone up, organised and out of the door with less shouting, nagging and last-minute panic. You can learn more about it below.
