ADHD Gift Guide

Years ago I promised my beloved Nip that I would write an ADHD gift buying guide. We take our promises and our fashion very seriously. 

And so on her birthday, I present ten five things that are making my life a bit more manageable. I've included links when the products were actually good quality or fair trade.

1. Apple Watch

Paul gave me his old apple watch years ago and I hated it. It was buzzing all the time and I couldn't figure out how to turn everything off. Which brings me to the most important gift-giving tip. If you give someone with ADHD a gift, you have to set it up for them. 

Years later when I asked him to help me be a time cop, he promptly went out and bought me the watch I love. I use it mostly for the alarm functions and to find my phone. Did you know that a normal wash cycle in Germany takes 3 hours? I think even a neurotypical person would forget to hang/dry. Also, did you know that I have 4 alarms every night to keep myself and my mini-mes on track for bedtime? 

6:20 10 minutes until dinner

7:05 Tummy check - are you actually full?

7:15 put out clothes for tomorrow

8:00 Last question - ie no more talking 

2. Check-lists

When you walk in our house you'll see an overwhelming amount of crap and also this:

Checklists right in the entry way.

Carmen only has one checklist with symbols as kids don't learn to read here until they are seven. 

She's done all her morning stuff, just the afternoon to go.

Hugo has a morning checklist and then his blue list is divided between afternoon and evening. If he completes the morning checklist by 7:15 he gets a popsicle. I haven't dialed in the afternoon/evening rewards yet. It's sort of tied to dessert but also so is their behavior at the table. So it's a work in progress. All kids get to chew gum while doing chores.

The best joke I ever did was writing "hug mom and dad "on Crosby's morning routine.

I can only recommend Nuud for pre-teens.

The morning checklists for Carmen and Hugo go in the baskets with their outfits for that day so they can wake-up and start checking before leaving them by the door. Crosby keeps his by the door. They've been a great step to not feel like a constant nag. However, on the weekends it's a toss-up if everyone's teeth are brushed. While I'd love to be analogue, my life requires Todoist. 

3. Time Management Cubes

Call it "time optimism" or "time blindness" but either way, time gets away from us. 

• I have the yellow 12 sized timer by desk to limit my time "researching" or encouraging me to do boring stuff according in a type of pomodoro technique.
• The red time cube we have on the dinner table to give members a minute or two of uninterrupted talking when things get rowdy (so always).
• The count down timer is what the kids use for music, typing, ten minute reading assignments, etc.
• The hour glass I got years ago when Crosby only practiced the piano for five minutes a day. It's currently outside for the five minute trampoline timer (ie big kids waiting for littles, etc).  

4. DIY Prayer Chair

While I didn't glean a lot from this book on ADHD, I did reflect on how to reduce my stress. I thought about the endless hours we spent massaging my mom's feet towards the end of her life. Thus, I treated myself to a shiatsu foot massager. 

We've since added a massage insert in the chair for the back. For those of us that are not so naturally inclined to contemplative prayer, we need extra incentive to be "still". 

5. A Home Organizer

But if you can't afford/find one, then working through this book.  I take a higher dose of Ritalin on the occasional morning and try to tackle the clutter with varying degrees of success. One of her tips was to have all the same socks. I made a comment to Paul about how boring that would be and he said, "That's easy, just have all cheetah socks." So just in case anyone was wondering, I do change my socks. They are just all the same print.

Perhaps there will be a follow-up segment to this gift guide, or maybe I will continue to start 4,000 other projects and not finish them. Thank you to Nip and all of the other people who put up with my flavor of chaos. Tips and tricks are welcome in the comments below.