Signs Your ADHD Kid Needs More Structure (And You Probably Do Too)

And How You Can Start Creating It In Less Than 24 Hours

Before she was born, my child was going to be free as a bird. Free to explore, fail, learn things on her own, unencumbered by the more absurd expectations society places on children. I was going to create a metaphorical garden in which she could thrive and grow on her own terms. And, through my own modeling of emotional regulation and empathy, she would become the perfect mix of a gentle, strong, and successful person.

While that sounds great in theory, and I’m sure some kids do very well with that parenting philosophy, it turns out some (most?) kids act like huge jerks when they don’t have extremely clear boundaries and consequences, schedules, and routines, no matter how great you are at modeling behavior and using positive rewards.

Why is this? Of course, “spoiled brat” comes to mind. But the emotional regulation issues I observe aren’t (always) a calculated strategy to get what she wants or avoid consequences. She feels lost when there are too many options. She needs her choices constrained.¹

Here are 3 problem behaviors I have observed, and what I’ve done in less than 24 hours that has resulted in noticeable improvements in my 9-year-old’s behavior.

Rude and Disrespectful Tone and Language

Why it happens: What she’s trying to say is “I’m overwhelmed and don’t know what to do and my fight or flight response is to fight you verbally, to show I’m in charge.” This can happen due to sensory overload, feeling helpless, feeling like she doesn’t have any ‘good’ options, or having a sense that everything is out of control. When she does this, she’s acting out a media narrative she’s seen whereby when teens and adults are stressed, they become cruel to everyone around them to gain control of the situation.

What I’ve done to address it: Make and print a poster of your family’s rules, daily routines, and consequences, and post it very prominently in your house.

This might sound like a completely unrelated solution, but it provides grounding to a kid who is otherwise feeling like things are constantly unsteady and she’s having to make too many decisions and her life is too unpredictable. These are visual reminders not only of the rules she has to follow, but that there are parts of her life that never change (whether she likes it or not).

They also serve as visual reminders for ME, an ADHD person who can’t remember anything, what the most important rules are, and what the consequences I’ve decided to implement are.

I made these in about 20 minutes in Canva

Constant Messiness

Why it happens: If clothes are constantly on the floor and trash is just set down on whatever random counter is closest to them, it’s time for direct instructions on the systems about Where Things Go When You Are Done With Them.

What I’ve done to address it: Mess is (usually) a sign of too much stuff to manage.

If mess is being created beyond clothes and trash in their room, remove everything in their room that isn’t clothes (except for maybe 1-2 stuffed animals if that is their jam). And put in a laundry basket(s) and a big obvious trash can (labeled TRASH, seriously the label is important, I don’t really know why).

Laundry basket goes BOTH in their room and in the bathroom (presuming they are, like my daughter, putting their clothes on the bathroom floor as they get into the shower).

Link the habit to something they want to do - play outside with neighbors, watch TV, whatever. They can’t do that thing they want until every item of clothing is picked up off the floor. Put a time in your phone that alerts you to the time they need to be doing this task so you can remind them every day for the first couple of weeks.

After 2 weeks, every time you have to remind them to pick up their clothes, they lose half their screentime or whatever reward they wanted for the day (so, if they normally are allowed to watch 60 minutes of TV, if there were clothes on the floor at the start of TV time they only get 30 minutes).

The ultimate goal: they have to do their own laundry, not just put it into baskets for you to do. So once they’ve gotten in a good habit of putting their clothes away, now link *doing* their laundry to some kind of fun activity like a movie night.

Every Saturday night, we watch a movie together. At the start of the movie, she puts her clothes in the washing machine and sets a timer for when it should be done. Timer goes off, movie is paused, clothes go in the dryer, and we get to have some kind of snack or dessert. At the end of the movie, we fold the laundry quickly together and put it away.

Stalling (Especially Bedtime)

What causes it:

Bedtime is boring, screentime slips too late at night, and there’s often too much opportunity to start in on a project that turns into a hyperfocus session that is very hard to get out of.

What I’ve done to address it: It sounds absurd, but the wind-down to bedtime begins around 6PM (ideally) with a goal toward 9PM lights out. Everything from 6PM forward is building toward bedtime. Yes, the bedtime routine is 3 hours.

If I had my way, there would be no screentime after 6PM, but because of sports, we often aren’t getting home until way after that, and screentime is an earned reward, I’ve had to figure out a way to fit it in while also giving a wide gap between screentime and actual lights out.

Here’s an ideal (non-sports) schedule:

• 6:00PM: dinner

• 6:30PM - 1 hour screentime (if earned)

• 7:30PM - bath

• 8:00PM - 10 mins reading (which ends up lasting prob 30mins-1hr, but I don’t have a problem with a bit too much reading)

• 9:00PM - lights out

Adjusted for sports:

• 7:00PM: dinner (a packed lunch she eats on the way home from practice which is usually 5PM -7PM)

• 7:30PM - 1 hour screentime (if earned)

• 8:30PM - 10 mins reading (strictly enforcing a 30 min limit, which is usually ok because sports are tiring so 30 mins is fine)

• 9:00PM - lights out

If she isn’t in bed with lights out by 9PM because of stalling, she loses screentime for the following day. This is, of course, highly motivating. We also as described above have this routine printed out in a place where she (and importantly, I) can see it every day.

The other piece of this is that I can’t have any screentime in the evenings. I actually bought a Brick recently to enforce this for myself. I cannot look at my phone between the hours of 6PM-9PM to keep everyone on track for bedtime. Not that I’m constantly hovering and barking orders, but just if I see something that will definitely slip into a hyperfocus I-must-finish-this-or-I-will-totally-freak-out activity starting up, I can intervene before she gets too emotionally invested.

TL;DR

A lot of ADHD misbehavior results from:

• too much stuff

• too many options

• forgetting

(looking at that list is basically a list of my ADULT problems with ADHD as well).

Solutions come in the form of:

• Reducing stuff and creating obvious places for messy things (dirty clothes and trash) to go

• Crystal-clear expectations and consequences parents can actually follow-through with (i.e., rules and consequences are memorable, and there aren’t too many of them, and it’s not complicated)

• Written reminders posted somewhere obvious in your house

Maybe this isn’t a problem for anyone except me, but in case you need to hear this: it’s OK if you haven’t implemented enough structure because you were trying to be gentle and give them freedom. We’re all doing our best here and many of us came of age as parents when there was an exciting new philosophy that revolved around not relying on shame and punishment to get your kids to behave. What good parent wouldn’t want to try those methods? But it’s ok if those methods didn’t work for your family and you’re now needing to run a tighter ship - still not built on shame and punishment, but on steady, reliable constraints.

1. This is a problem for adults too. My next post is going to be about decision fatigue and how constraining your choices as an adult is beneficial for adult ADHD issues as well. I also think that parents struggle with implementing structure because there are too many options presented for being a good parent - one expert’s firm but loving authoritative ideal is another expert’s stifling emotional abandonment.