I don’t know how much of my difficulty in regulation/scheduling/consistency is rooted in my neurodiversity but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it is most of the reason. When I was younger, in order to get stuff done for school/theatre/projects, I would write meticulous schedules like I was gettin a CEO through meetings. People told me that my schedule looked terrifying and nightmarish and they could never do it. I always found that confusing because I was trying to do the same amount of stuff I saw them doing and I couldn’t understand how they managed without tracking it down the 5 minute block.
This becomes a big problem when I have projects that I can’t get done in a reasonable amount of time given all the other schedule considerations (bathroom remodel, painting this house) and I toss my regulation out the window to fall into flow and hyperfocus around work. I could absolutely be a crazy genius who only ran on the spark from my own motor but I would be horrible to live with and I don’t think I’d be a good mother.
Being a good mother is the task I care most about. Over being a good friend. Over being a good tool. Over being a good wife. My kids are neurodiverse and really struggling in a few key ways. Ways that I could fix if I excised most of the filler I’ve added to my schedule and went back to basics.
I’m part of a lot of unschooling support groups and in many ways I deeply respect it. Many of them even focus on neurodiversity and finding ways to help folks allow their quirky little people to focus on being emotionally ok over productivity. I can understand that. But in every conversation around parenting priorities and supporting children there are a lot of factors that are hard to talk about without it being an argument when I really don’t think it should be. I love when folks can feel safe and confident and say, “We’ve tried a bunch of stuff and what works for us is ______.” I’m here for it all day. I may take inspiration from 1% of what you are doing and the rest isn’t for me but that doesn’t mean you should change!
Every family is a mix of personalities, experiences, strengths, skills, challenges, disadvantages, cultural perspective, gendered socialisation, education, and ambition.
People who are neurodiverse need coping skills for living in a world that is not suited to people who are constantly distracted by shiny butterflies. I’m not saying we need to learn how to fit in or how to conform more and stick out less, fuck that. What I am saying is that we need to survive and that means we need to look for ways of adapting information and tasks to our ability to follow through.
So. I have been loosely keeping my life together for decades with paper planners. I will also use white boards and online calendars as supplements but I am a paper girl. I neeeeeeeed to write it down. The act of holding the pen and writing it down creates the picture in my mind I can bring up later. All days of looking at a computer calendar blur together in a mass and I can’t get a clear mental picture of any one day in particular. But paper calendars can’t make my watch harass me. So, both!
Today I begin the indoctrination of usage of a planner. They will live on the table in the kitchen. We will track things. We will write down our to do lists. We will talk about what we need to do during the day and block out how we will get it all done.
Because of my intense habit of overworking or adding in things last minute I am including private down time for all of us. We neeeeed to be able to rest and self soothe sometimes. The cheese falls off my cracker if I don’t have this time. It’s a need. We need to exercise–we have upcoming plans (more on that later) and we need to be fit enough to enjoy that time. If you don’t train and work up gradually you are going to suffer a lot. If you won’t enjoy this trip you have scheduled… why pay for it?
I think that part of this is going to include me needing to get up earlier and come out side to write. The random “I have to say something ok fine Facebook” posting needs to come to an end. I am curating that in such odd ways. I need to go back to writing for me with the whole story attached. I don’t think I’m opening up the archives at this point, but I need this.
I need this in order to track what I’m doing with the kids. I need this so I can communicate more clearly with Noah. I need this because it makes me happy. I need this because writing is what makes me feel like a whole synthesised system. Most of the time I feel like a collection of separate personalities/actions that barely overlap. But I am whole. I am complete in ways I never anticipated. I think the hibernation of not really talking/writing about my emotions for several years was useful in a way. I had to put everything in a box, tape it up, then stick it in a cupboard. When I have peaked in the box over the years for brief seconds it’s been remarkable how much smaller, less intimidating, less dominating than they used to be. Even the experiment with stimulant medication was not anywhere near as bad as it could have been in the end.
(Lisdexamfetamine situation is in a weird limbo. Won’t be able to talk to a new person till the 19th. 40mg was too high and was becoming a problem. Then scheduling challenges.)
Like that. I am not going to explain all of that right now but I’m allowed to put a pin here. I would feel awkward doing that on Facebook.
It is incredibly dramatic to me the way that none of the Scots use Facebook the way my American friends do. But then again… almost every single person I am friends with from the States are people who are old-school BBS users or people from livejournal or academics and many many many of us are ok with being very public and loud and messy about our ups and downs and our struggles and our neurodiversities.
It’s weird that I am going to have to keep the writing on the downlow-ish. I need to not mention to people that I do it. But if people google me, Hi!. I should change the splash page with trigger warnings.
This is the beginning of our fourth year in this house. Lockdowns have dramatically altered the flow of time. *They say that it takes 7 years to feel like you really belong in a new community. I think that will take more than that to really feel settled I can see glimmers of that forming. When you plant a vine there is an adage that you should expect the vine to sleep the first year and put all of its energy into putting down roots instead of growing up In the second year it will creep a little and you will wonder if you did something wrong or maybe you killed it. Then in the third year it will leap and grow massively.
I am looking at those three time considerations and trying to build a theory for myself of what I am aiming for. Oh, and child development. Ha. I think I started creeping before I was really fully ready. I had more sleeping to do but the children’s needs and the challenges of joining a community meant I didn’t really allow myself to just sleep in my space. I hit the ground running.
I need a schedule. I need to keep it. I need to measure my time and weigh out the importance of the various factors and I need to change what I have been doing in some very big ways. Or I am going to fail on the very most important job at all. The one I have 14 more years on. All the other everything will probably still be around in one form or another. In reality I have about 10 more years before being a mother is not my primary all day role. What do I want to do with it?
I see what is going on with the kids. It’s time to build a new scaffold and then I have to fucking stay in it. They cannot build their scaffold if I am not in place. They aren’t ready for doing it from the ground up. This is the deal.
Time is up for the day. Now, breakfast.
*whoever “they” are