Self-Parenting for the Childless

September 28, 2023

Author’s note: True to form, I just discovered this blog post sitting in my Drafts a few weeks after starting it. I made sure to post it before my ADHD brain forgot it existed!

A piece of advice you always see when you’re looking up something like ADHD is to treat yourself like you would treat a child. This can be a confusing phrase or concept to someone who does not have a child of their own or does not particularly like spending time around children. What does it mean?

As a childless person by choice, I have personally encountered this confusion during therapy sessions, as well as from books or chat topics. Other people always seem to understand so quickly what it means to “parent yourself” or “react to your emotions the way you would want to react to a child.” It was hard for me to admit at first that I didn’t really know what that meant. I eventually came clean to my therapist that I didn’t know how to do that — but not until I had admitted it to myself, several sessions after she had first used the phrase. I understand that this may feel like an odd question to ask, so I will try breaking it down into simple parts.

As a quick disclaimer, I am not a doctor and am not providing medical advice. Additionally, I will use some generalizations in the below examples. Not all children or adults will behave in the ways I describe.

The high level

The first step is understanding that emotions will not always be logical. That does not mean they are invalid or should be ignored in any way! But just as you can understand that a child will not always act logically, you can remember that your emotions will not always correspond with what your brain “knows” is “right.” (Your brain is not always correct when it thinks about emotional responses as “right or wrong,” but that is a subject for another time.)

As a hypothetical example, if a child is upset because their favorite show has mysteriously disappeared from your available streaming services (don’t we all hate that?), you can only explain this so far. Ultimately, you can’t use a magic ability to fix the problem by restoring the show to your services, and you may not be willing to pay for another one (there are so many!) But you know the child will feel a range of emotions to be without something they enjoy. They will not necessarily have the mature ability to consider the other shows that they can watch instead, nor the limit of their parent’s ability to “fix it.” You know they won’t be logical about any of this, but the emotion is still a real experience for the child. While you, as the hypothetical adult in this scenario, would be able to consider the costs of each service or perhaps think of other similar shows to suggest, the child will only be feeling their sadness and frustration. You can acknowledge and work with their emotions without invalidating them, even if you are powerless to “fix” the problem, and they have to eventually settle on the other side of the moment with a different show on television.

The second part is that children will typically do what is easy as their first choice. This is human nature, in general, but it’s especially true of children. Humans are likelier to pick up an item from the shelf at, or near, eye level; behavior patterns like this are a crucial part of retail store display designs. Adults are more able to look at the entire shelf and pick an item based on additional criteria, such as price. This behavioral approach is stated in terms of children simply because they are likelier to follow their first instinct. When an adult is not paying close attention to their shopping, they will not necessarily make a different choice.

Turning this into another example, if you make it very easy for a child to get their snacks or water out of the fridge when they need something, they are much more likely to get it when they need it before they become hangry (hungry + angry). Likewise, if you make it very easy for a child to put their own coat and shoes away, it will make it much more likely that it happens without you telling them every time.

That’s the foundation of this advice, as I understand it. It isn’t that we are trying to design our lives so that we never have to think and can follow our human instinct to do what is easy all the time, but rather to improve our environment so that what can be easier is adjusted so we do these things more consistently and are not running out of mental or physical stamina when we get to the harder tasks in our day. What things are part of your daily routine that are necessary but difficult? Can they be restructured to be easier, even if that’s not what you thought of as “normal?”

Curiosity to find new solutions

By removing the need to be logical, you can look at your feelings more curiously. Instead of thinking to yourself, “Oh no, I’m feeling really grumpy right now, and I know that no one has done anything to deserve me being this way. Therefore, I am acting illogically, and this is wrong! I am terrible!” You can pause and think, “Okay. I am feeling grumpy, but why is that happening?”

This is part of “treating yourself like you would want a child to be treated” because when a child is struggling to express one of their needs, the best option is to find out what they need in a kind and compassionate way while remembering they don’t know the words for everything. Of course they don’t; they are a child. But you and I, even though we are adults by definition, will not always know the words, either. We will not always know how to explain what we feel, and we will not always understand where it is coming from. Unfortunately, this isn’t something we will learn magically at age 18!

So, if you find yourself coming home and feeling very grumpy, it is worth taking a moment to think specifically, “What is it that made me just feel this way at this moment?” Are you dealing with lingering annoyance from something like driving home in traffic or being overstimulated on a bus? Is it something else like you are hungry and need a quick snack before preparing your dinner? (Eating habits with ADHD are another whole topic!) Or are you thirsty and need water? On the other hand, this could be something environmental that you could make easier for yourself. 

If you have just come home with a bunch of groceries and immediately put them away, you will expect to feel accomplished because you just did what you were “supposed to do.” But you may not feel that way. You may be very aggravated. This is a sign that your storage solutions for your groceries could be part of your annoyance. Completing the task does not give you any sense of satisfaction but makes you more grumpy. Why is that? How specific can you be? Is it that you have something stored in a downstairs room because that made sense when you moved into your house, and now you have gone up and down the stairs several times in a row?

This is a situation that I just faced when we were reorganizing some things in our upstairs. After living in this house for several years, I had to admit that things that were downstairs were not technically far away but were very annoying for me to go get when I needed them. Plus, I would put off making a grocery list because I didn’t feel like going downstairs to confirm how many extras we already had of this or that.

When I admitted this and attempted to think about it as a problem that would improve my life to solve, even if it was not necessarily “100% logical,” I was able to find some shelving that fits in an upstairs closet and change how our pantry overflow was stored. It doesn’t make sense to everybody when they come to our house and see which closet we have put canned goods into, but honestly, it doesn’t matter because we are the ones who live here, and it makes sense to us.

I made a part of my regular routine easier for myself, and it has helped me to do the more logical, “right” thing more of the time. It’s freed up some of my mental energy because I don’t have to lecture myself into doing the “right” thing. On that note…

Stop the judgment!

Reframing your inner thoughts to reduce self-criticism is one of the most important steps to accepting your ADHD or other neurodivergent traits. Let’s say that when you come home from work, school, or running errands, you’re carrying many important things. Books, non-perishable items, receipts, the mail, and so on. You’re tired from all the tasks you just completed. You know you “should” put all these things away. (Ugh, “should.” That word…) But you’re tired. By the time you finish putting it all where it belongs, you’re in a terrible mood. The table is clear, but you rushed through the process and maybe dumped some items into another room without taking the time to do it properly because you didn’t have the energy.

It’s okay to be tired. We are not robots with endless reserves of energy. By allowing yourself the opportunity to rest before forcing yourself through your responsibilities, you may be surprised at how much easier they are to attend. What works for me is to have a single staging area in a straight line from the front door — in my house, it’s the dining room table, but we rarely actually eat there, so you may want to choose a different one. When I come home, tired and yet aware of all the rest of the items on my to-do list that are non-negotiable (like eating), I allow myself to put stuff down in this staging area.

Don’t worry about how much stuff it is or what it looks like. As long as nothing is perishable or at risk of getting broken by putting it here, just put it down. Take a minute, or thirty. Put on your comfy not-going-out clothes. If you have to walk past the table of stuff several times, let it be. It’s actually not hurting anyone. Quiet the critic that jumps from your shadow to say you made a mess! Clean it up, now!

Then, when you are not feeling so tired or overstimulated, after you’ve had a snack or a cup of tea, return to the table. Sort whatever you’ve carried in so like is with like, then begin putting things where they go. It’s honestly fine if this doesn’t happen until the next day. Just ensure you clear your staging area before you go out again so you aren’t piling multiple days of stuff onto this area.

This is just one example that I have experience with, but ultimately, the message I want to make clear is that judging yourself will not help. If you need to accommodate your fatigue with something that helps you cope, something that doesn’t hurt anyone but is not what you were taught at some point in your past, that’s actually… fine. It’s fine. When I get a lot of stuff piled up on my table, I don’t like seeing it there, but I no longer internalize that I am some kind of lifelong failure for having some cluttered surfaces. The work is the same — I’m putting the same number of items away — but I don’t dread the situation, and I don’t seem to mind doing it. When you remove the self-judgment from one of your behaviors, you might be surprised to discover the “should” doesn’t seem as daunting anymore.

(A caveat for myself is that mail should not go on the table. I hate dealing with the mail and will often let it sit for several days or longer. The mail has its own staging area where it waits for me to handle it. This works for me; I feel genuinely annoyed when I see mail on the table, and I’ll often move it before I actually deal with it. Mail is, like, a whole other blog for me. If you have something like this, my advice is to make sure you don’t let it fill up more than one area. I only have one mail staging ground, and if it gets overwhelmed, that means I have to deal with it.)

Personal Care

Personal care routines are a common example of this struggle to do things we know will benefit us but feel difficult and annoying. Women, especially, are often faced with a lot of “should do” moments between our societal expectations and our personal preferences. If you have ever worn makeup, you have doubtless faced the dilemma that you “should take your makeup off before going to bed,” even when you are very tired. Even without makeup, it’s very common for people with ADHD to struggle with the routine tasks associated with skincare — and these tasks are all things our “logical brain” is telling us we “should” do — we may even want to do them quite badly. They will still be a struggle.

How can you make it easier to care for your skin, hair, teeth, eyes, etc.? Although I get too much discomfort sleeping in my contact lenses, I know some people struggle to take them out! This is another example where not doing a thing has a clearly negative impact on our health, but we do it anyway. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for this, or else we would all be doing it already. You have to think about it from a non-judgmental place of curiosity. I’ve definitely faced the struggle of taking off my makeup when I just want to sleep. My workaround depends on the day and how much makeup I’m wearing. If I can, I will just use eye makeup remover on a cotton pad, removing my mascara. I will also reach for a makeup remover wipe to pass over my face. I try to put on some extra moisturizer before bed because my skin tends to get dry and irritated, but sometimes I can’t make it happen.

The crucial component is that I keep all the items I need for this “easy version” of the task in a single location (a drawer in my bathroom), so I don’t have to move around beyond standing there. (The “proper” makeup remover is in the drawer, too. Sometimes, I find a reserve of energy I didn’t know I had when I open the drawer and see the makeup remover. I do the better version of my routine skincare because I have already positioned everything to make it easy!)

When you feel overwhelmed or keep putting off a task, it’s worth taking a moment to question why and if you could make it easier for yourself — even if other people can do it without making it easier. What works for me might not work for you at all, let alone the HGTV-style households that we are conditioned to think of as the ideal norm. Some of these modifications will be more obvious than others, and some tasks you may not be able to make that much easier and will have to do it either way. But by making other responsibilities easier, when you run into one of those more difficult steps, you will have more reserve in your emotional battery to deal with it rather than put it off.

Above all, tell yourself it’s okay if your solution “looks weird” to someone else. As long as you aren’t hurting someone else when you make this change to your surroundings, you do what works for you. (As always, check in with anyone you live with before making major changes or reorganizing the entire house.)

If you don’t know what to do

There are definitely times when I don’t know how to make something easier. You can find advice for some of these situations if you search the internet — even things you thought were very personal to you may be a shared experience. A good resource as of this writing is the ADHD subreddit or the ADHD Women subreddit. These resources may not always exist, but I hope they do because there are years of history where people have struggled with specific circumstances. 

However… It is also easy to open a site like Reddit, even on a specific sub like these, and end up spending loads of time that you didn’t mean to spend and forgetting why you came there in the first place. When I find a useful post, I still have to commit time to read many comments until I find something helpful. So I definitely understand why it may not be your first choice to go here. But it’s worth trying if you have not found a solution on your own if you can zero in on your mission.

When I run into a problem like feeling frustrated by my available storage for clothes or groceries or just “a thing that is a mess, and I know I need to organize because it is not sustainable this way,” I spend some time trying to find better options online. However (again), we live in a time where search engines are changing what they will promote from a store versus advice columns that may be pieced together from AI. I can only guess what will happen over the coming years and how it may be more or less difficult to find solutions just by searching. It’s worth a shot to put a specific phrase in your search engine or into the Reddit search, even for something that feels strange and esoteric. It’s almost guaranteed that whatever aspect of your life you want to improve, someone else already has; now you have to find it!

I’ve found some good tips in FB groups centered around organizing, and I know there are tons of TikTok videos about it. If you’re struggling to find anything helpful, step back from the situation. Put down the searches and social media, and reframe your situation. If you’re searching high and low for a storage unit of very specific measurements, unless you are a carpenter who can build your own, it might be time to devise an alternative idea. Or, you may need to consider repurposing another item instead. Often, I need to scroll past the suggested storefront purchases and look for some blogs specifically about organizing. Unfortunately, despite our tendency to always do what’s easy, the ever-changing world of search engines and Internet business models will not always make in-depth information the easiest to find.

I always have more to say

This will lead directly into a post about how doing something part of the way is often better than nothing. We are not referring to heart surgery when we talk about the more difficult tasks due to ADHD. (If you are a doctor who performs heart surgery and you have ADHD, I am pretty sure you have already customized some aspects of your life to allow you to perform the surgery correctly, or else you would not have your career! But… you still may struggle to put your coat away!)

I want to write that post, but if I’m being honest, I will not want to write two of these blogs back to back. I would likely want to wait to publish this first post until I wrote that second one. This is a risk because that means I may not write the second one for a long time, and by the time I do it, I will have lost the motivation to post this one. There are also reasons why posting twice back-to-back on social media is not great, but in this case, it is primarily a choice driven by my ADHD. So, I will share this post without making it perfect to have a follow-up link ready to go where I previously would have held myself to that unfair standard of perfection.

If this topic resonates with you, let me know on my socials or in the comments! I’m slowly expanding a list of personal recommendations and would love to add to it if you have ever stumbled upon an excellent solution for this kind of problem!

An Important Addendum

If you’ve read this far (thank you!) and are still unsure what it means to treat yourself like a child, that’s okay. Some of us associate childhood with painful memories where we did not receive the kindness that all children deserve. What matters is how we treat our adult selves and adjusting our inner voice to be less critical. We can all strive to do better and break unhealthy habits without judging ourselves.

Remember, whether you have been diagnosed with ADHD or not, whether you have never questioned being “neurotypical vs neurodivergent,” and those words don’t feel like things you’re ready to dig into, you should always treat yourself with kindness. Find a curious mindset to question your emotions, but don’t think you must do that alone. If things feel overwhelming and frightening, consider finding a therapist or counselor to help make the changes you want to make. You don’t have to change anything drastic all at once to make small improvements that will add up over time. It’s never too late to start making little steps to be kinder to ourselves!