I’m going to post some quick tips about working from home. I’ve been working from home for almost a decade. It was certainly a challenge at first, but I feel like I’ve been pretty good at it for the last several years. Of course having my kids and my wife at home is a pretty big change, at least I haven’t had to alter my professional life…much. Hopefully I can pass on some things I’ve learned over the last 9+ years so you can adapt more quickly.  The first tip is mostly mine, with a very specific detail from my brother-in-law. I think it is really important to still approach your day with a purpose and with some professionalism. I learned this in culinary school, where I was in the a.m. class and needed to be on time for school at 5:30 a.m. with a pressed uniform, hat, neckerchief, shined shoes, hair regulation, piercings out, clean-shaven, awake, and ready to learn. And that level of professionalism was expected at most of my high-end restaurant jobs. So, when I transitioned to working from home, I didn’t have to wear a hat or a uniform, but I did decide to get up at a regular time, shower, shave, and get into reasonable clothes every day. My brother-in-law is a lawyer who doesn’t particularly like working from home. Good for him he just bought a two bedroom condo and one bedroom is set up as an office. He takes my philosophy one step further. He actually gets into a suit and tie and dress shoes as if he were going to the office for real and goes into his home office at 9 a.m. and closes the door. Work time. I’ll post more tips in the coming weeks. Standard Disclaimer:  In an effort…

Planning. Planning. Planning.  In this “new normal” being prepared seems more important than every. Not quite as easy or safe to zip out the the supermarket and get that thing you forgot about for dinner. We are shopping bigger with the hopes that it lasts longer. But how to know if it will? I think it is really useful to make a menu for the week… or two weeks between shopping. That way you can be mindful about spreading out certain item. For example, I generally do pasta twice a week, but don’t like to do it two days in a row. I can mix in once in a while dishes, like hamburgers, stir fry, tacos, and stroganoff. I can also plot when to use my veggies, ensuring that those that have to get used first do get used first. That way nothing goes bad.  When I’m not doing pasta or special meals, I generally think in terms of Protein, Veggie, and Starch. I think of it like one of those character flip books from when we were kids. (Below is the only pic I could find in short order online.) Remember those things where you could flip 1/3 of the page to end up with character with a cowboy head, ballerina body, and astronaut boots? You don’t have to plan the meal down to the smallest detail. Just have some potatoes, some rice, some bean, some fries. Have three of four veggies. And, have a bunch of different proteins in the freezer. Of course some things will go better with others. But there is no real disaster when you have a starch, a protein, and a veggie.  If you have salmon, sausage, chicken breasts, and ground beef in the freezer; brussel sprouts, asparagus, delicata squash, cauliflower in the fridge; and baking potatoes,…

Hey y’all. I’m a bit late for my Friday post. (Though I’m going to cheat and post date this.) Actually, going forward, I think I”m going to shoot for posting more often but with considered brevity.   So, I’m not a big fan of screen time for my kids. But, we have to do some more than usual. I’m trying to limit it during the day but we pretty much do movie night every night. Bear in mind that I have a just turned 11-year-old boy and an about to turn 6-year-old girl.  So far they’ve loved: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey Major Payne (Big hit with my son.) Back to the future The neverending story… was a major bummer. Watching the first 20 minutes of it nearly ruined my childhood. Things we’ve done in the past that have worked… because I’m a nerd and am raising mini-nerds: Any modern Star Trek series, except DS9. God that show sucked.  Once upon a time. Very cute. Great for the whole family through about season 4… I think The Marvel Movies. Even if you’ve seen them before. Go back and watch them chronologically. Either in order of release or in order of when they occured.  X-men movie. Patrick Stewart; James McAvoy & Ian McKellen; Michael Fassbender? Need I say more? We are also diggin on cooking shows. I’m enjoying Jamie Oliver’s 15 minute meals and 5 ingredients with my daughter. Iron Chef, Iron Chef America, Good Eats, and old school America’s test kitchen/ Cooks Country are always favorites.

Well, the world has changed quite a bit since I wrote a blog post about 10 days ago. Thankfully, my family and my friends are all well. I have three freezers and am a classically trained chef… so we aren’t going to starve. I hope all of you reading this are well and secure. Of course there are many long term, societal, and economic consequences of this situation. But for those of us with kids, the battle is more day to day at this point. As there is talk of school being done for the YEAR, I’m pretty psyched my wife and I survived week one. I thought I would share some insights over the next few weeks about how to survive our sequestration with ADHD kids… and an ADHD dad.  First check out the picture below. SCHEDULING IS KEY! It’s less about the specifics or even if you stick to it. But it sure beats the, “what do we do now” discussion. That’s usually when my kids go off the rails. Bear in mind that I have a relatively independent 11 year old and an extremely needy almost-six-year-old. Your needs and results may vary.  Here are some specifics of what I try to put in my schedule every day.  I need to work out every day. That can be spin bike, weights, or digging out a bed in the garden. Generally my parenting is more on point if I get my workout in earlier in the day. Even though life is crazy, I’m making time to practice the drums every day. I’m not very good and haven’t been playing for that long. But I enjoy it; it’s “me” time; and it’s reasonably physical. My wife and I are insisting that we get 1/2 an hour of time together without…

I work with many ADHD adults who have wonderful marriages / relationships. But I also work with many ADHD adults who have significant relationship struggles. It is well established that ADHD can make things difficult in any partnership, especially a romantic one. Here are a few of the highlights of how your ADHD can lead your relationship down a challenging path. ADHDers often hyperfocus on new “shiny” relationship and set an unrealistic bar for excitement and novelty that can’t be sustained for the life of a relationship. Being an executive function disaster certainly has consequences when we’re single. But when our lateness, disorganization, forgetfulness, poor time management effect our partner, it’s not just our problem anymore.  The more people are involved, the more complex a system is created. You, your partner (who both work,) and two or three kids is a lot of responsibility. If one partner feels like they are shouldering significantly more than half of that responsibility it will likely lead to resentment.  Often ADHDers unintentionally select a partner who compensates for their weaknesses. For example, someone who is super structured and organized and runs their life like the german train system down to the minute. This usually works for a while but often deteriorates into a parent/child dynamic or learned helplessness. If the ADHD partner isn’t expect to be organized, they will never learn. And that can become a burden for the non-ADHD partner.  The same dynamic can often lead to resentment for the ADHD partner too. Who wants their wife to nag them just their mom did for 18 years?  Lack of attentiveness in interpersonal interactions, if consistent, can make the not ADHD partner feel unheard, unappreciated, and unvalued.  Alright, so we’ve established that it can be a challenge to me married to an ADHD adult. But, if…

I was talking with a client today about relationships And I articulated something that I don’t think I’ve said in such a clear and concise way. So I wanted to pass it along.   It is my opinion that much of the success of long lasting relationships has to do with finding a way to prioritize things that are of importance to your partner, even if they aren’t inherently important to you. Of course this is even harder for ADHDers because we have a hard finding the time or energy for things that we aren’t inherently stimulated by.  As for how to address this… I don’t know about you, but I enjoy doing nice things for my wife. And frankly, if you don’t enjoy doing nice things for your partner, I’m not sure you should be together. Now you just have to figure out what’s “nice” according to her, not necessarily according to you.  This concept can apply to everything, from the mundane to the monumental. As a small example, maybe starting her car on a cold morning is something that makes her feel loved. You might not care about your car being warm, so you don’t want to bother to put your boots and jacket on to do it for her?  On a larger scale, maybe you both have very different needs on vacation and need to understand each others’ points of view to be able to make it a vacation for both of you.

I saw my ADHD Dr. on Wednesday and he told me about this new texting program that he developed with MGH to help parents manage their kids’ ADHD. Anyone can use it. The first month is free. And, it may be available for adults in the future. Please check it out and let me know if you like it.

When dealing with brain chemistry issues it can be really difficult to know that what we are experiencing isn’t “normal.” After all, we don’t have anything to compare to how we feel. ADHD is particularly hard to identify because it doesn’t develop later in life. Depression, for example has an onset. So there is an opportunity to compare how you feel when you are depressed with how you felt before you were depressed. Not to say that that is always easy. But I feel like we, as a society also have a better vocabulary to talk about depression.  As ADHDers we also get so much negative feedback telling us that we are lazy, unmotivated, not reaching our potential, that it’s hard not to internalize at least some of that. I guess my point is that you should trust yourself. How you feel is unique. Don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t valid. 

As I continue to recover, here’s a low hanging fruit post. Great article on ADDitude about Gaslighting… really about how classic abusers operate. I’ve seen it far to often in my practice. Check out the link. https://additudemag.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=05c078d02e79a07f64018da62&id=d046363c36&e=56e9d42595

Wrote this before I got sick… hope it’s still topical… and useful. One more important note on last week’s post. Scheduling your day is just a mini version of scheduling your week or month. The only difference is that it is a smaller and more detailed. It is no secret that many of us with ADHD struggle to transition from one activity to another. I have found that one of the best ways to manage this weakness is to have a plan. If you have to stop and think about what’s next everytime you finish a task, that layers additional executive function on top of the difficulty with transitioning.  But if you have a plan/ a schedule for your day that is reasonably detailed and accurate, you always know what is coming next. I think that if you know what is coming next you can get your brain to start the transitioning process earlier. Then you are much more likely to be able to flow from one thing to the next. For example, when I’m with a client, I’m fully focused on that client. Yet, somehow, it still helps me to know if I have another next, or if I’m going to the gym, or if I’m picking up my kids, or if I’m doing office work, or writing a blog post. Somehow my brain can begin the transition and be ready to move to the next thing when I have it planned out. Try it. I bet it will work for you too. Standard Disclaimer:  In an effort to foil my own perfectionist tendencies, I do not edit my posts muh,  if at all. Please excuse typos, mistakes, grammatical errors, or awkward phrasing. I focus on getting my content down. In my humble opinion, an imperfect post posted is…

Great topic in this week’s ADHD weekly from the NRC. What you need to think about before traveling with your ADHD meds.  It is also very important to think about when you are going to be out of your meds. Don’t want to run our while on vacation. I recently had a client deal with this. It really just required coordinating with the doctor, pharmacy, and insurance… which in her case actually went smoothly.

Hello everyone. You may have noticed that I haven’t posted and entry in about 2 1/2 months. Well, without going into the gory details, I got really sick. Like, 16 days in the hospital, nine of them in the ICU, kind of sick. I’m expected to make a full recovery. But it has been slow going allowing my body and my brain to recover. My plan is to start posting shorter, less attention intense entries to get myself back in the swing of things as I work toward full health. Just know that I haven’t given up on sharing my thoughts on ADHD and related issue and that I hope to be back to more in depth and more expansive topics as soon as I can. I thank you all for your patience.