Why having ADHD has made this mom 'feel like a good parent' during the pandemic
When my son was a newborn, I had a brilliant impulse. I packed him and his big sister up and took us all to a gorgeous lake an hour’s train ride away. It was picturesque and sparkly as we walked up the gravel. The moment we reached the shore, he cried out for a bottle. I checked the backpack, and then the bottom of the stroller, becoming more frantic. No milk. He cried the whole way home. When we finally walked in, there was the spoiled milk waiting on the counter next to all the dishes I skipped so we could rush out of the house on our adventure. I felt like the world’s worst mom.
Having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has made my life a wild romp, and I have a ton of great stories about impulsively befriending strangers on vacation in Mexico City, or trying risky things like paragliding and entering a karate tournament after practicing for only a few months. But ADHD also makes parenting particularly arduous. Many caregivers can relate; first, the distress of my son’s cries made me feel helpless and totally unregulated, which is common. Also, having ADHD means an increased likelihood of “home chaos,” a term encompassing the sights, sounds and activities common in households like mine. For me, it looks like toys everywhere, music and media on blast, and making a fuss if someone tries to help me organize by hiding my things in cabinets or drawers; my object permanence symptoms make it feel like things have disappeared.
For a time, with help from mental health professionals, I had things under control. Parenting my daughter was difficult at first, but I felt like I really got the hang of it by the time she was crawling. In the early months of 2020, I was heavily pregnant with my son while also parenting a toddler, and I felt so proud of myself for managing to keep my kid busy while I studied for my doctorate in curriculum. I would set up outside playdates with bubbles, finding myself able to trudge through my books when surrounded by a village of parents.
When the pandemic happened, even bubbles became symbolic of the danger we felt around us. Our world became confined and tiny overnight. Suddenly I had to get creative. I started making elaborate tape-and-string toy traps so my daughter could play animal rescue. There were weird times with PlayDoh and inedible kitchen potions, sometimes combined. And there was screen time. A lot of screen time. That’s how I found out about all the other parents with ADHD who are in the same boat.
I started to realize that although balancing studying and working with children underfoot has been chaos, in some ways my ADHD prepared me for this. I wasn’t diagnosed until halfway through college, so by then I had an inventory of tricks to help me overcome the challenges of ADHD. I grew skilled in anticipating when an event might be monotonous, so I knew what to pack and how to stay entertained during long doctor’s visits. I found healthy ways to channel my impulsivity so I could model it for my children. Most of all, I could tell when it was time to ask for help.
I’m used to dealing with boredom and can keep myself (and my kids) entertained with the same tricks that got me in trouble in school; fortune tellers, paper footballs and tic tac toe are my old friends. I felt uniquely positioned for this strange moment in time. And I knew I wasn’t alone. In fact, I watched other parents sob on social media as they explained how overwhelming it was to no longer have all the aids and resources that helped us adapt to a world that demands long stints of attention.
Over the past couple of years, there have been added challenges of parenting in a pandemic, which has required parents to multitask at unsustainable levels. But my own therapist helps me reframe and look on the bright side. Having ADHD isn’t all sunshine, but it has made me feel like a good parent who can play make believe, spontaneously have a picnic in the living room and banish all my kids’ thoughts of boredom.
KC Davis, a licensed professional therapist who runs StruggleCare and the author of How To Keep House While Drowning, says she relates to being able to find bright spots as a parent with ADHD.
“I find that so much of my creativity comes from being ADHD. The way my brain ignores the obvious but finds connections between concepts that others may not see,” Davis tells me.
When she allows herself downtime, she says she often finds herself in an “inspiration bender.” The real magic is when it happens with her kids: “If they say, hey let's build a fort, I'm not just gonna throw up a couple of sheets under some furniture, I'm going to really hyper-focus and tear the house apart building the most elaborate fort you have ever seen. I think my kids like that about me.”
These days, it’s easy to focus on the ways life is an ongoing challenge for everyone, especially parents with ADHD, and the lack of research into benefits of ADHD compounds this. But it’s not all bad. Maybe cleaning up the kitchen potions … But the rest of it? It’s kind of fun.
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