Back to School When the ADHD Brain Belongs to the Parent

It’s almost September.  The new shoes have been bought. The uniform is labelled and the PE kit located after an unnecessarily stressful search of the house.  You’ve spent hours preparing the children so that they are regulated and ready to embrace whatever the new school year brings.

And for most parents, this is the end of the story.  This is where they can stop and finally breathe.  Back to School – box ticked.

But for many ADHD parents, back to school isn't quite the glorious return to normality we imagined somewhere around week four of the summer holidays.

We talk a lot about how difficult transitions can be for neurodivergent children, yet much less is said about what happens when the neurodivergent brain belongs to the person trying to organise everyone else.

Because back to school is essentially an executive-function obstacle course.  Suddenly there are so many emails to read, forms to complete, clubs to book, lunches to remember, calendars to coordinate, school apps to check, kit to find and approximately 4,000 new dates that apparently need to be added to your diary immediately.

For an ADHD brain, that's a lot.  ADHD isn't simply about being distracted or forgetting things. It can affect the executive functions we use to plan, prioritise, organise, remember and get started on tasks.  Add several children, different timetables, work and normal life into the equation and September can create a perfect storm.

And there's another side to it too.  After six weeks without the usual structure, we have to find our own routine again.  ADHD brains often have a slightly complicated relationship with routine.  We can resist it, become bored by it and simultaneously function considerably better when we have it.  During the holidays, bedtimes shift, meals become less predictable, work gets squeezed around childcare and the usual markers in the week disappear.  Then September arrives and expects us to switch everything back on overnight.

So if you're feeling strangely overwhelmed by something that is supposed to make life easier, you're probably not imagining it, nor are you failing…it just takes a bit more of a creative approach that actually works for your brain.

Try putting things somewhere you will actually see them rather than somewhere they should live.  Set the reminder when you first read the email, not when you tell yourself you'll deal with it later.  Keep duplicates of things that regularly disappear.  Share the mental load where you can.  And, perhaps most importantly, don't create an elaborate new September organisational system that requires more executive function to maintain than the problem it was designed to solve.

Simple usually wins and don’t forget to give yourself time to adjust.  Transitions don't stop being tricky just because you're the adult.  Your brain is having to recalibrate too.  Sometimes getting everyone through the right door, roughly on time, wearing approximately the correct clothes is quite enough.

Connect with Vicki Neon Mind - ADHD & Neurodiversity Coach

@neonmindcoaching | www.neonmind.co.uk