Parenting a Child with ADHD - Clean Up Strategies
Getting our children to clean up after themselves and keep track of their things -- these are two tedious tasks of parenthood. For a parent with an ADHD child, this job becomes even more important and certainly more difficult.
Luckily, there are some basic things you can do to help your child develop good habits when it is time to clean up.
Simplify
Susan Pinsky, professional organizer and author of Organizing Solutions for People with ADD, notes that the more toys and clothes our children possess, the more unwieldy cleanup time becomes.
“The typically large volume of unnecessary and redundant possessions that we see in the modern American home actually sabotages the ADHD child’s quest for self-sufficiency,” says Pinsky. “As the parents of ADHD children, we need to challenge our systems: We need to ask ourselves, 'Why does my daughter need 10 Barbies when she can only hold two? Will my son ever use all 500 Leggos at one sitting?'" The point is that when a room is overflowing with toys, the task of organizing them and finding a “home” for each toy becomes unmanageable.
Think about your own children’s toys. Can you weed out any toys that haven’t been played with in some time? Together with your child, box up some of the items that he is willing to give away. He may have younger cousins or friends to whom he could give these toys. You can also check out the local charities to see if they are in need of toys. Use this time to teach your child about sharing. Once you get the amount of toys down to a more manageable number, cleanup won’t be such a chore.
Are your child’s clothes drawers so full that they are hard to close? Are they filled with shirts and pants that have been outgrown? Spend some time weeding through these as well. When it is time to put clothes away or find an outfit to set out for the morning, it will be much easier for your child to do this when drawers are not overflowing.
The Importance of Efficiency
Pinsky stresses the importance of efficiency, simplicity and convenience over the traditional values of beauty and frugality with the following two examples.
- It is more efficient for your ADHD high schooler to drop a coat on a hook by the door than to waste effort on the more aesthetically pleasing multi-step solution of walking across the room, opening a closet door and wrestling a coat on to a hanger, which she won’t do anyway.
- It is efficient, though not particularly frugal, for your ADHD fourth grader to have an expensive $30 dollar wall-plug electric pencil sharpener at his desk, eliminating the distracting task of running into the next room to use the hand crank wall mount or hunting through the drawer for batteries.
These organizational methods, which stress efficiency before all other values, work for an ADHD child, because the chore or task is not tedious, distracting or a long multi-step. Instead it is simple, quick, convenient and manageable.
Eliminating the Stressful “Rush Out the Door” Scenes
“Here again we must reject beauty,” explains Pinsky. “A rattan basket next to the door to corral backpacks is a great and attractive solution for the average child, but the ADHD child needs something a little more obvious to keep the backpack on his radar.”
The solution?
Once homework is done and packed, your ADHD child’s backpack should live IN FRONT of the door. “He should literally have to move it aside to get out the door, because once it is in his hand, he is less likely to forget it.” He also won’t have to stress spending time to find needed items, because he has put them in their place in front of the door the night before.
The same rule applies to your child’s athletic equipment. Rather than storing cleats in the garage and the lacrosse stick or soccer ball in the basement, designate an area in the garage right beside the car. This way it has a “home” or designated area, and it is conveniently located right by the car, so it is easily found when needed.
Pinsky notes that even perfect cleanliness may be compromised for efficiency. “Your daughter’s ballet slippers should live in a single bin with her tights and leotard. Of course, for many Mothers, it just doesn’t feel organized to put the dirty slippers in with the clean dance clothes. If this organizational system enables a young ADHD girl to get herself out the door in a timely fashion, though -- eliminating maternal nagging and stress -- then maybe in this family, efficiency, not perfect cleanliness, is the more appropriate value.”
In other words, it is important to remember that for an ADHD child, the most effective organizational system is one that is simple, involves minimal steps and energy and is convenient.
Additional Reading:
- Tips For A Happy Home
- Positive Parenting Strategies
- Channeling That Energy
- The ADD Child vs the ADHD Child
Source:
Susan Pinsky. Interview/personal correspondence through Lynn Blenkhorn. 08 May, 2008.
