ADHD kids & Cleaning Their Rooms - Laura The ADHD Mama

Do you struggle to get your ADHDer to clean their room. Here is a video explaining a bit of what’s going on in their brain. Please be patient and empathetic. Just shouting and demanding your child meets your unrealistic expectations does not work. "If you don’t get this done by ___ time to MY standards..." This style does not work.

I fully expect to help my ADHDer much longer than her peers. She needs the added supports and empathy. She will learn how to do this on her own and will probably do a better job as an adult because she wont have the added guilt and stress associated with cleaning.

[psychochicken]

Awesome video, something we started with our daughter who is almost 7 now, is I make a written list with the steps to clean up her room. I will help her some, but now she will read the list to remember the next step. It has worked well enough that I can step out for a short time to put supper in the over and come back and she is still working on following the list.

[NyxesRealms]

I just sent this to my mom. I'm well into my twenties and I'm just now learning better coping mechanisms for keeping my room clean in between ADHD and depression/anxiety. Plus I just started medication. Thank you for all your efforts, you said it better than I ever could.

[jhalaby]

Loved this video. I would also say, when you take on a task like this with your kid, be sure to leave extra time for them to be distracted. I took my 8 year old to the supermarket to begin to show him how to shop. I made sure we had only to get about four items. I also made sure I had zero time constraints. I needed that because he inefficiently zig zagged from one side of the market to the other to find the items and he found four or five new ways to push the cart and he talked to people and read boxes and played with things...it took forever. But in the end he learned a bit about the store layout and he felt hugely accomplished. One step at a time.

[Thatperson-ktmu]

My adhd son just yelled at me and wouldn’t do his homework I was feeling upset so I came on YouTube you have really made me feel motivated to try again in a calm manner. For now I’m letting him calm down with some Netflix and food then when he is in a better mood I’m going to tackle the homework in steps.

[dewberry]

In my twenties and cleaning my room is something I work through in therapy. People really can’t understand how doing something they see as so simple might not be for others. It took months before I was able to fold my own laundry without having a melt down. But progress can be made with support and without judgement.

[nadinemeisner_happywithin]

I love you 😍 literally have tears in my eyes because I'm so grateful I found you. It felt like you have just healed my childhood cleaning trauma and this will actually help my daughter (almost 5) not even to develop one in the first place. I kept telling her and myself that when she's 5 we will start getting her involved with chores on a daily basis and I was very unsure how to best manage her and my own path to success witu this because we both struggle with it, and you speaking in the constellation of her, brain, me, has helped me tremendously for some reason. So grateful to have come across this video 😭🙏🙏🙏💕

[crowbeatlebambi]

i’m 17 and i’m still struggling with this, as a kid who was only diagnosed with adhd when i was in eighth grade, but this makes me smile 😅 ty!

[FenrirAldebrand]

My parents form of "help" growing up was coming into my room with a garbage bag and taking everything off the floor. So i still don't have the skills needed to clean my room properly. An ADHD *AND* Autism diagnosis would have been so incredibly helpful as a child. But they didn't care enough to see it.

[beautifuldiva]

Watching your video really helped me out a lot. My 9 year old daughter has ADHD and it’s been tough. From telling her to clean everyday and repeating myself constantly, I sometimes get frustrated and yell but now after watching your video I’m going to try a different approach without the yelling and help her completing the task that was given. Thank You

[lillianfulgham]

I have borderline ADHD and just watched your video while taking a break from trying to clean my room while I'm home from college for summer break. I'm 21 :) Your video helped me to better understand my own thought process and I now have a better plan for tackling this project. I wish that my mom and I had been aware of how to clean with ADHD when I was much younger. Still, better now than never! Thank you!
(Now, let me cuddle my stuffed unicorn while I mentally prepare myself for the next pile of

[Miyori]

I do really like this, how you explain why it's so overwhelming for a kid(and adult tbh) with ADHD. How things NEED to be broken up into smaller components otherwise your kid's brain just shuts down completely. Once I learned a little about how my brain operates, I've tried explaining this same concept to my mom, when it takes me a week to brain my way through cleaning my room, but it's just "an excuse" kind of like how Autism is just "an excuse" for my brother's speech impediments. (Just talk normal, she says). It's just really refreshing to see a parent who understnds and has some level of empathy for their kid's brain function being different from their more normative peers.

I'm nearing 30, and I don't have issues cleaning the rest of my house because it's broken into steps, "Take out the trash" "sweep the floor" "dust the TV" where I can complete X task, be done with it, take a break, then head on to the next task. With cleaning my room, it's more difficult...I don't know where to start and get easily overwhelmed, but being an adult with many years spent in therapy, I have ways of talking myself through this, whereas kids or even many adults with ADHD don't yet have the tools for this.

[shelleypauwels]

OMG!!! THANK YOU!!! You just described how my daughter behaves! We just recently found out that she is ADHD and myself as well. I love that you share your ideas online! Validation of our brains thinking differently and being accepting of ourselves is very hard. It's awesome to see a mom broadcasting idea and help in the real world! Again, thank you! That's what makes you a super-hero mom and she will remember that when she's older. Kudos from TN!

[SW-xkfb]

Thank u for this video. Ur performance could be me and my daughter. And I feel sorry right now that I pushed her so hard. I just started to realize that she most likely has adhd. So I try to make things better in the future. Thanks for ur effort to educate the people. And sorry for my bad English haha. Nice greetz from Germany :D <3

[izzyval]

I have ADHD and this made me understand more about why I can't clean my room like a normal thirteen year old. Thank you so much for putting this video out in the world. #ADHDsquad

[beetlebug]

woah, you’re so understanding. thank you for being like this.

[hannahherrmann]

I’m just trying to get myself to clean my room

[articwolf]

I think I have adhd. Because of all this and a lot more stuff. But I just started crying when you said im so proud of you. I dont remember my mother ever saying that to me once in my life..

[shubharao]

Laura, lovely video.
This thing about ADHD kids have no concept of time is very scary, especially when it comes to their studies. Any tips on this would be very helpful.

[koffeewithkandee]

I just got diagnosed this past year (36 yrs old). I was never taught the steps on how to clean. I would do exactly like the kid in this video until my mom would end up just doing it all for me :( now I have a child and I've been doing the same thing without realizing. and it's bc I still don't know the right steps to take that work for me, but I'm learning and determined to figure it out.

[JeliToast]

Not me watching this and understanding to figure out how to clean my room