Is It a System? Or Is It Just Mom?

I’m an ADHD Coach. My job is to help people externalize their executive functioning. In English: we take the strain of remembering all the things you have to do, being on time, getting motivated, off your brain and we build those things into your environment instead. So they just kind of happen to you. We revise the system. Not the person. Because I believe you are not the problem. Your systems are. Your environment is.

But my kids just started school and I find myself in the predictable place of trashing last year’s systems and starting over. Why? Because there’s a nasty secret lurking behind all those shiny, happy ADHD family systems. All the visual schedules, and screen time limits, and DOOM baskets, and dry erase boards.

Behind the color coding. Behind the laminator. There is a mom.

A disheveled, exhausted, hoarse, ragey mom.

Here’s the part that never makes it onto the ADHD Tools Pinterest board. Externalizing executive function doesn’t mean removing it. It means moving it somewhere. And in most houses, that somewhere is Mom.

I built the visual schedule. I laminated it. Brush your teeth. Eat breakfast. Take pills. Pack snack. Pack water bottle. Shoes on. Backpack in hand.

I don’t ask the kids to look. No, ADHD brains have selective vision. So they touch each one when they are done. So I ask, Did you touch each one? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? Yes?! Then where are your shoes?!!!

Photo by Teo Zac on Unsplash

I did not remove myself from the system. Nope. I became the narrator. I became Siri.

The board still needed a person to notice it wasn’t being used. A person to remember it existed at 7:42am while also finding a shoe and listening to a story about a Minecraft villager. A person to ensure it was completed. An announcer and an enforcer.

That person was me. Ask any mom running an ADHD household what “externalized” actually means and she’ll laugh at you in a way that has a little bit of scream in it.

In researching for this year’s updates, I received suggestions like putting checklists on top of remotes, on backpacks, on shoes. Right. So, who makes the checklists? Who finds the remote? Who places the checklist? Another three things for me to remember.

Now let me correct myself because trashing last year’s systems was a mild exaggeration. That’s my frustration talking. The why-can’t- enough-ever-be-enough? frustration. The will-we-ever-get-this-figured-out? Frustration. But the truth is that things are much better here than they used to be. And it gets better and better every year the more we learn.

What I’m actually doing is much more boring than trashing. It’s revising. Or what we learned in ADHD Coaching school to call “sparkle-izing”.

I’m going back through last years system to check for dependence. Where does this system still need me? Where is it breaking down? Where am I still the active ingredient? And how can I build myself out of it? One degree at a time. The same way you don’t teach a kid to ride a bike by letting go of the seat all at once.

Last year, the visual schedule had the kids touch each item once they’d done it. Touch it, move on. Sounds independent. It wasn’t Touching leaves no trace. There was no way for the system to remember what happened five minutes ago which meant I still had to. This year the same chart has an actual magnet. They move it. No screens until it’s moved.

Each kid has their own color. A magnet on each item on the board. A screen when the board is full. That’s it. The only change is that the consequence is no longer me. It’s a magnet. And a screen. It’s the environment enforcing so I don’t have to.

I have a confession though. Because the redesign story sounds like a breakthrough. But it wasn’t quite like that.

Magnets weren’t new. I’ve tried them before. And it was a disaster. A slow-motion disaster that still makes me grumble when I see the evidence.

The board was posted in the boys’ hallway by their rooms. Where they got dressed and ready for school and bed. Made sense, right? Except nobody walks down a hallway on purpose. You walk down a hallway to get somewhere else. So the board just sat there. Doing nothing. With nobody looking at it.

I didn’t realize that’s what was wrong. I just knew it wasn’t working. And I did what we always did when something wasn’t working. I decided the kids weren’t good at following systems. Or the system was too complicated. Or I hate magnets. Or whatever.

But the magnets weren’t the problem. The magnets were fine. The problem was that I put a visibility-dependent system somewhere nobody was ever going to see it.

It took me years to understand that. Which is a little embarrassing to admit for someone whose entire job is teaching other people to see this exact thing in their own homes. But isn’t that how it goes? The cobbler’s kids’ shoes and whatnot?

This year we have boards in the entry and boards in the kitchen. The highest traffic paces in the house. They are unavoidable. You cannot get breakfast, leave for school or come back home without physically passing them.

So here’s the test I’m using now on my own house before anyone else’s. If I left town for three days, does this system still happen? Or does it just sit there, laminated, judging me. Waiting for me to come back and be the executive function it was supposed to replace.

For most systems starting out, the honest answer is no. It doesn’t run without me. I am the system. I always was. I just built a nice looking frame for myself.

The goal is eventually for the system to become a habit. One that runs in the background instead of the kind I have to narrate out loud. As so many have over the years. Last year, ten months of touching a laminated square and it never once went automatic.

A tiny tweak. Same system. Different engine.

I will return and report.

---