Questions I have are whether
(a) anyone has strategies or stories for dealing with ADHD lack of ability to complete simple multi step tasks?
(b) whether there is a difference is multi-step task completion challenges between adult and children?
Here is some background:
So I have ADHD ex wife and ADHD tween son (he youngest of 3) and rest of us not ADHD.
It has been very difficult forever to communicate basic multi-step tasks to the ADHD part of the family.
Until they were diagnosed 5 years ago, I thought it was me not being able to properly describe, even though at work I had colleagues who could listen and retain 10-step tasks and return quickly with perfect execution.
Now I know this is an ADHD challenge, to not be able to easily execute basic daily tasks.
I used to cope by just doing it myself (and still do), but for my own sanity and grey hair abatement, i am trying to encourage skills for them to complete multi-step tasks without me.
For example, regular basic stuff from this past weekend that has been going on for years:
1) "son (12), can you please feed the dog, the new food is at the front door, and put the new bag in the pantry"
(he goes to back door and comes back claiming there is no food)
"the food bag is pink with a picture of a salmon, it is in a black grocery bag at the front door are you sure?"
(he goes to front door and brings back a red back with toilet paper)
"that is red, what about black bag with dog food?"
"try again", i say. he gives up "ohh i can't find it"and starts to get down on himself and almost cry and quit the task.
i have to do it myself, the bag is the same color and place i said.
2) this weekend ADHD ex wife is staying in same hotel another room for 3 day event and the kids are going back and forth between rooms as she is too. Electronic room keys all look the same and she keeps misplacing the keys and forgetting which is which and needs to go to front desk everytime to get into her room. Total chaos since we are coming in and out 10-15 times a day, and after 24hr literally have 10 keys all look the same.
So I go to desk and i get 3 keys for each room in an envelope and label each. I give them to her and say "do not take card key out of labelled envelope".
Few hours later, of course all the keys are out of envelope and she is at the front desk calling my room because her keys are wrong and she forgot her ID back in room.
Basic attention seems non existant and the non-ADHD takes the burden and I am trying to put is back on the ADHD to no avail since they always just give up quickly in my experience....should i just let them fail and fail until they "get it"?
Comments
yes and yes, but they won't get it
I hate to be a downer, but yes, you need to let them fail and suffer the consequences but it most likely will not happen that they will ever 'get it' - because you are there to pick up the pieces. And it just doesn't work that way.
I think you've encaspulated what so many of us are going through and the frustration of the highest degree - some of the things you describe are also me. We are facing an autistic (not ADHD surprisingly) dx in my son and taking the example of the dog food - if you give them a task that is of importance to another living being/creature, you might want to rethink giving those. Not forever, just to amend how you do it. It sounds like you are handing them too many instructions in one go - they just can't compute it all like you can. And that's ok! It's just how it works - try to think of the end result and goal - if the dog needs to be fed, can your child be responsible for it? or it is that the end goal is for the task to be fully completed - if it's the latter, then you have to not give so many instructions to full complete a task in one go. It's just setting them up for failure and you for disappointment.
I'm not saying by changing the above, you wpon't be frustrated. I'm currently wondering if I am staying in my 20 year marriage bc I've had ENOUGH. We all have our deal breakers...and then some. but definitely wanted to give the suggestion to break down the smaller tasks or lower your expectations of a neurospicy person being able to complete a task in the same way as a non.
You probably can’t make it improve
Someone who has succesfully trained an ADHD child with CBT methods might disagree with my take on this. However I’ve spent decades alongside ADD adults and children and feel I haven’t ever been able to help them improve their executive skills. I can show and explain how to do things until I’m blue in the face, they will still lose, forget, spill and knock everything over on their deeply impractical way through life.
This, along with the social isolation of ADD passivity and avoidance, are the things that still make my heart sink these days.