An ADHD-friendly home is set up to make it easy for members with ADHD to manage daily stress and avoid emotional meltdowns. By following these basic rules, you’ll not only simplify your family’s life, but you’ll lower stress levels for everyone. Routines make life more predictable. From morning routines to afterschool routines to dinner routines to bedtime routines, schedules help provide consistency. Try to keep the time that your child wakes up in the morning, eats, and goes to bed each night fairly consistent from day to day. This is helpful advice for adults, too.
There should be a place for everything, so that everything can be kept in and found in its place. For example, each child should have a designated area for bag pack, shoes, coats, or toys. If the child plays sports, provide a designated area for equipment. If she is involved in ballet, her ballet bag has a designated home. The clean leotard, tights and ballet slippers all stay in the ballet bag.
For parents there are designated areas for keys, purse or wallet, glasses. When everything has its own place and the family consciously makes this effort to get items in their designated spots, items can be found when needed. This also helps eliminate the rush-out-the-door-anxiety or frustrations people experience when they cannot find needed things.