Looking for advice from other parents with ADHD and/or autism

Thank you all so much, I am going to reply here as all of your insights have been helpful. I will try and break your recommendations down so they are manageable for my brain lol!

 Iain Regarding the checklists, how do you create them? Do you order them from somewhere? 

 Martin  About the stability part, I strongly suspect my partner is ND too and sometimes we clash, particularly when my emotions are intense! I should be receiving support through university, so hopefully that will be useful. 

 profdanger Child LOVED books when they were younger, they still do but manga

 Alien0n3arth I'm sorry to hear that, I hope you receive support and I am sure you show up for your child but in different ways 

Loz said:

Regarding the checklists, how do you create them? Do you order them from somewhere? 

I would create them in something like Microsoft Word or whatever word processor software you use.

Make the font size big enough to make it easy to read but still have all the check boxes you need.

Create one per task - save it so you can update it if needed and print it out.

If you want to be fancy you can laminate it and use a non-permanent marker, but sometimes it is hard to beat being able to tear up the sheet when it is complete and drop it into the recycling. So satisfying.

With time you will get to know how many you get through per month and can print enough to have on standby.

In terms of the individual tasks it will very much depend on the task - think about it when you next do it and scribble a few notes of what are reasonable chunks of the task. Refine this over a few more repititions and create a list of these tasks in the word processor. To the side of hte task have an empty box for you to tick when complete, or you can simply score it out once done - it depends on what is most satisfying for you.

For school prep I would think of:

1 - check if you need PE kit. If so, go fetch it and put it in your school bag. Refer to your timetable if you are not sure.

2 - check if you have any homework to take. pack it.

3 - check what books you need for todays lessons. pack them. Refer to your timetable if you are not sure.

4 - Have you packed your lunch / lunch money / voucher

5 - Have you packed your pencil case / glasses / tissues / mobile phone etc

You get the idea.

For you, if you are preparing the food for lunch then this probably needs to be done the night before with perhaps just something like assembling sandwitches to be done in the morning and bulding a shopping list so you have the ingredients for the next days sandwitches as a final step.

Loz said:

Regarding the checklists, how do you create them? Do you order them from somewhere? 

I would create them in something like Microsoft Word or whatever word processor software you use.

Make the font size big enough to make it easy to read but still have all the check boxes you need.

Create one per task - save it so you can update it if needed and print it out.

If you want to be fancy you can laminate it and use a non-permanent marker, but sometimes it is hard to beat being able to tear up the sheet when it is complete and drop it into the recycling. So satisfying.

With time you will get to know how many you get through per month and can print enough to have on standby.

In terms of the individual tasks it will very much depend on the task - think about it when you next do it and scribble a few notes of what are reasonable chunks of the task. Refine this over a few more repititions and create a list of these tasks in the word processor. To the side of hte task have an empty box for you to tick when complete, or you can simply score it out once done - it depends on what is most satisfying for you.

For school prep I would think of:

1 - check if you need PE kit. If so, go fetch it and put it in your school bag. Refer to your timetable if you are not sure.

2 - check if you have any homework to take. pack it.

3 - check what books you need for todays lessons. pack them. Refer to your timetable if you are not sure.

4 - Have you packed your lunch / lunch money / voucher

5 - Have you packed your pencil case / glasses / tissues / mobile phone etc

You get the idea.

For you, if you are preparing the food for lunch then this probably needs to be done the night before with perhaps just something like assembling sandwitches to be done in the morning and bulding a shopping list so you have the ingredients for the next days sandwitches as a final step.