Late...Again

Having an ADD mind can have a lot of benefits but the drawback I think I hate the most is lateness. Too often I walk into a building or room hanging my head in shame, trying to pretend like we meant to be late because we had an important errand to run or something.

I think I hit an all-time low recently when I was over an hour late meeting a friend who was angry because she was waiting for us all that time. I couldn't blame her and I felt so lame to utter tons of excuses as to why we were JUST getting there- Even though I did have a good reason in my defense. I mean, how do you explain ADD to someone who doesn't know? How bad do excuses sound on a regular day? Try adding the blame for some mysterious and misunderstood condition to each excuse you rattle off. It sounds just as much like BS to their ears as it does to yours.

And you can't possibly put it into a nutshell. I tried that for an inexperienced herbalist once and it didn't work so well. She ended up telling me I didn't have it, that I was normal but not getting enough sleep, and that I needed to stop clinging to labels. I wanted to laugh. Then I wanted to punch her in the face. Needless to say I ditched her pronto and will be more selective in screening future herbalists.

The messed up thing is, its symptoms are mostly normal behavior, tweaked just enough so that it drives you insane trying to figure out how in the world you can possibly tweak it back, on top of living life.

My First Post

So I thought long and hard about what my first post would say and as a normal day in my life would have it, I've done a million different things and tended to as many distractions between now and then. As you may have guessed from the title, I am a Mom with ADH/D just trying to blend in and live life as normally as possible- which is probably exactly where I go wrong every day. Just as the world is not made for short people, neither is it conducive to those who struggle with every day tasks that should be easy.

Some friends of ours (our kids' friends) are visiting this evening and I was thinking about how envious I am that their bed time is 7pm. I wish I could get it together enough to make that happen consistently but every ADDer knows the only thing consistent in my life/our lives is inconsistency. Oh and my remarkable ability to be late to just about everything.

My kids are 4 & 6 and I'm amazed at their patience because I would have kicked me out a long time ago. They suffer because of my symptoms and I think this is the most hurtful thing of all about this condition. Due to inability to adequately plan, lay out my day and evening, and to have an accurate concept of time, they don't get enough rest and neither do I.

In my attempt to be normal, started out this school year (oh, I homeschool, did I mention that?) I laid out a new schedule for us in the hopes that I can just follow along every day but it ain't workin' out so well. Nap is always late, so that causes bed time to be late and if bed time is late, how do I ever achieve the goal of 7pm like most normal, healthy kids? This sleeplessness is really affecting their ability to remember what they learn, which is scary and makes me wonder on my bad days when I beat myself up if I'm cut out for this and maybe I should just send them to school.

But I know I'm their Mom and no one else can do any better for them because this is MY job and I'll try like crazy for their sake, if nothing else, to keep things as normal as possible for them. So we trudge on with trying to get the new schedule right...until Daylight Savings comes around (ugh!!).