Children with ADHD are amazing at living in the moment, which makes them a lot of fun! It also means that they can struggle to plan for the future, even if the future is a few minutes away. The result? Forgotten lunchboxes, messy bedrooms, last-minute panic over a late assignment, and chaotic mornings!

Children with ADHD can struggle with time blindness, staying on task, and avoiding distractions. To help them be more successful, our goal as parents is to externalize these concepts, making them clear and predictable, creating structure in your child’s world.  

One of the easiest (and hardest) ways to do this is to set up routines. While routines can be incredibly overwhelming at the beginning, they ultimately help children with ADHD be more successful because they know what to expect. To help YOU start off on the right foot, here are some of our favorite tools for building routines: 

1. Consider what your child is (and isn’t) capable of right now – and then grow from there.

Think a...

How’s your week going? Let me guess...

You have everything running perfectly on schedule, right? You’ve gotten all the house projects done, laundry put away, finished everything at the office at least 48 hours before it was due, and baked three dozen sparkly cupcakes for the bake sale... AND your children got along without fighting, listened every time you asked them to do something, and sat quietly (without prompting) when you had to answer the phone. Whew, a truly perfect day. Or was it a little more complicated than that?

Regardless of what you accomplished today, let me reassure you that this parenting thing is a lot of work… for all of us! And when you really think about it, it’s amazing that as parents, we are able to balance so many different roles at one time. Seriously, how do we do it? Whether you realize it or not, you constantly use executive functions to help you get through your to-do list every day. This unique set of cognitive skills helps us every time we set a goal,...