Stop the Summer Chaos! 5 Simple Steps to creating a flexible summer schedule for the ADHD family - Q&A Session: "Top Tips" Encore #148
It's June, and your kids are either home now or about to be home for the whole summer. That is three unstructured months of chaos ahead of you... cue panic!
Wait! It doesn't have to be!
You asked; I answered: What does Patricia's summer schedule look like?
With a few minutes of planning, you'll create a flexible structure to fit any family during the summer break and all year long.
No need to panic nor roll your eyes at me! Having a schedule doesn't mean you're stuck with a minute-by-minute inflexible itinerary sucking the fun out of every hour. Your summer vacation can still be full of fun and freedom and impromptu activities without you losing your sanity on the daily.
Having a running list of activities to keep everyone entertained keeps my stress down and decision fatigue low. There's no scrambling around in the morning trying to figure out, "Mom, what are we going to do today?" Or the wasted mornings where I can't figure out what the answer is, and all of a sudden, it's lunchtime, and I still don't know what we're going to do today, and it's half over!
Today we're walking through what the schedule setup looks like, as well as how I have implemented that framework for our family with specifics on time and activities. Our family has used this basic schedule for multiple years, and we adapt it as our kids grow from babies to toddlers to preschoolers to elementary school to adults (that's for me, the mom.)
**Note: This episode originally aired in June of 2021. As I take a break for the summer and quality time with my family, I'm sharing episodes that will help you get ready for the summer, support you with some integral support skills for ADHD, and then get ready for the new school year.
I'm cooking up some other stuff behind the scenes. Plus, I'll see you in the fall with brand new episodes! Talk to you then, Successful Mama!
To hang out with me over the summer, you can:
1) hop on over to our free Facebook community to meet your people and feel like you're not a weirdo -AND/OR-
2) join me on Wednesdays during our weekly meetings by signing up for my course, Daily Planning for ADHD Moms, where you'll get your day organized and actually show up for stuff mostly on time, or my program, Time Management Mastery for ADHD Moms where you'll create the best daily routine for you and your family that your ADHD brain will actually be okay with following. Get stuff done while you love your life & your brain.
Patricia Sung 00:00
Hey there successful mama, it's your friend Patricia Sung. How's your prioritizing? Are you making space for what you need? What matters to you? Are you resting? I recently asked myself these questions and the answers were terrible. No, I don't know. And no. So it was time for some reflection. How do I serve you well, and take care of me and my family at the same time, I know that I have to cut back on something in order to do more of another, which is not the solution I want to hear. But it's the realistic one. And that means taking a break from something I really love the podcast, and hang out with you each week. This is a very adulting decision on my part, because it's not what I want to do. What I want to do is make more episodes. I also want to spend time with my family during summer break, and I want to create space to serve my community better. This is a skill I've been working on with my ADHD coach is how can responsible Patricia and fun Patricia both get what they want. So when I look at this summer, and ask myself, How can I serve you better? Well, there's two places you can hang out with me either join our free Facebook group where there is a huge community of mamas who are amazing. We'll be there to answer your questions and cheer you on. And I love spending quality time with you guys in that group. Or you can join our student community because all of my students are invited to our Wednesday meetings. I've also got a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on to prepare for the fall. And I know I'll be at the zoo and swim lessons camp and all that. So that means this summer to make space for all that good stuff. I'll be sharing some oldies but goodies on the podcast straight out of the vault this summer.
Patricia Sung 01:40
Now, most of these are in the first 25 episodes I ever did. Full disclosure total perfectionist moment, I know that these first episodes are not as good as the ones I do now, because I've had way more practice. But I also know that there are some really great skills and information in this first group of podcasts. So I'm looking my perfectionism square in the face and sing to it new. I will not let you stop me from sharing important things with my mama's. One thing that I've learned the hard way in this podcast is that we learn by doing, we figure out what works by doing, not thinking about doing. And this is one way that I can be myself with you and say, I know that these are not the best episodes, but I know that they're really good information for you. So don't judge me. Okay, I chose episodes that will help you get ready for summer support you with some integral support skills for ADHD, and get ready for the new school year. So I'll see you in the fall with some new stuff. And hopefully I'll see you either in my student community or in my Facebook group. I'll link all that in the show notes so you know where to find me. Until then, talk to you soon successful mama.
Patricia Sung 02:46
Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home or your family. I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families. Well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD.
Patricia Sung 03:52
Hey there successful mama. It's your friend Patricia Sung. Today we're starting a little series called ADHD Q and A i don't know i call it a little series because I have no idea how long I'm going to do this. So if you have a question that you want to hear the answer to shoot me a note email me DM me on Instagram and maybe your question will appear here. Today's question is how do I come up with a daily schedule? I don't know about you but all that free time freaks me out. What are we going to do all day? My kids are gonna drive me nuts. What does that look like? Or people asking me what is my actual schedule so I'm going to explain to you exactly what I do or like a rough schedule for the day and how I set that up so you can go sit down after this episode and jot down a rough schedule for you and your family and hopefully keep the insanity at like level eight instead of level 10. Or maybe even like level six but before we do of course we need to say thank you to an amazing review from Free Life Mama. She titled it Yes Yes and Yes, love how this podcast gives real an actionable steps that I can take as an ADHD mom to make life better for myself and my family. I so needed this. It's easy to just get down on myself about the crazy that is my life. But this podcast makes me feel like I'm not alone and that I can keep going. Thank you for your life Mama, I love hearing you cheerleading yourself forward because you can do hard things and you certainly are not alone. Be sure to hit subscribe, so you get the next episode on your phone right away. And now let's dig in because this episode is definitely an actionable steps one. So grab your pen and paper, if you're a note taker, let's get to work.
Patricia Sung 05:28
So your daily summary schedule, the goal is to create a framework with your repeatable activities, and then fill in the activities that are going to change on a day to day basis. For me, I start with my anchor times and those would easiest with kids is mealtimes and bedtime look, we got to feed our kids multiple times a day, I really wish that we could just be like snake moms and like throw them around once a week and call it a day. You don't even have to cook that thing. But as humans eat so many times a day, especially little humans. So that is a really good anchor point. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then bedtime. They happen roughly at the same time every day. Now, did this happen overnight? No, it was hard work. Everything takes hard work. But going in, I want you to think about why are you doing this? What's your motivation? Is it because you're trying to keep your sanity? Is it because you don't want to lose your ever loving mind and yell every day? Figure out why this matters to you. And then employ the tools you have. I know a lot of people are like, Ah, I don't really want to schedule really like cramps my style. I'm a free spirit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like we all have an excuse of why we think the schedule isn't going to work for us. And don't get me wrong, like I would gladly just laze about my day and not stick with the schedule. But here's the thing. In my almost 40 years on this earth, I have come to realize that this just makes my life easier. And I'm down for that like this what I need, I need more ease, I need more simplicity. And in my life to be simpler.
Patricia Sung 06:56
When I keep a schedule, my must haves happen. It keeps my decision fatigue down because by the time dinner rolls around, I won't think about any more things because I already thought about too many things anyway, that I can take out more decisions in my day, amen. It lowers my stress, because I know what's expected, my kids know what's expected. There's not as many surprises because I've planned for several of the surprise things to be in some kind of planned feature. And my kids just aren't driving me as bonkers. As you develop these routines, they start to run on autopilot. And that means that I have more mental energy for the important things. But that also gives me time for fun. I can do an impromptu zoo trip because my laundry is pretty much always mostly caught up. My house is always mostly clean. My podcast is mostly scheduled. And if I want to do something random on a day like I can, I don't have to. But again, this also means that my weekends are for relaxing. When my husband's off work like we want to spend time together as a family. I am not down for this like Saturday, clean your house all day business like no not doing that.
Patricia Sung 08:05
Our weekends are about relaxing and enjoying like yes, I still have to do things like you know, clean up after meals and sweep under the table. But it's like little things. I'm not scrubbing toilets. And I'm not dealing with the mound laundry. Like all that stuff has been handled during the week. And that makes my life so much more simple. So I'm going to outline the day for you and then give you specifics on kind of where our schedule runs. So we start out with like waking up breakfast in the morning routine, that's one chunk, then we have the get your energy out with some kind of morning activity and a snack section. Then we have lunch in the midday routine which goes straight into like quiet time and naptime. Then we have snack, we usually have some kind of indoor activity because I live in Houston, and it's stinking hot outside. So by that point, we're probably not going outside. We can both run at three o'clock in the afternoon. So we do something inside usually in the afternoon, then we hit into the dinner routine into some family time where that way like we might go back outside. If we need to get rid of some energy, do something together, that's fun. Or we all can do something quiet on our own or in smaller groups, and then we hit the bedtime routine.
Patricia Sung 09:15
So what does that look like from a time perspective? Unfortunately, my kids got my husband's genes and their early risers. Why they don't take after me in the department. I don't know. Maybe there's hope when there's teenagers, but I digress. They're up at 630 at the latest. So they play for a little bit while I get ready we eat breakfast get our morning routine done in morning routine includes things like cleaning up all the dishes, getting a little laundry started getting lunches ready if we're going to pack our lunch for like our activity out getting all our birth things together. And like yeah, in an ideal world, I try to get those things done the night before but you know, sometimes that doesn't happen. This means that all that stuff gets done by like 830 - 9 o'clock we're ready to leave The House most days we try to do something outside of the house when I'm not working. So we're out the door, doing something fun getting energy out, we take a snack with us, we eat at around 1030. Then we have lunch by noon. Sometimes we eat it out when we're out and about or we make sure that we're home by noon to have lunch, maybe like 1230, the very latest, my kids get hangry so I try not to push meals and then we hit that like midday routine of things like checking back in with the laundry cleaning up the ones dishes, and then we roll straight into quiet time. Or if you've littler ones, naptime. Everybody like takes down a notch and is quietly playing somewhere as quiet as three year olds get that is roughly like an hour and a half, two hours, we hit about three o'clock snack time, that indoor activity during any like chores and stuff that needs to get done around the house. And then around for 430 is when I try to start dinner. If I don't make a point to tell myself that dinner prep has to start at a certain time. Dinnertime shows up and I'm like what's for dinner we should be eating right now in my brain skips over that step of cooking, or reheating leftovers. So I have to tell myself, like, depending on whether I'm cooking or it's leftovers, like for 430 stop whatever I'm doing and go figure out some food situation. That means by like, five 530 We're eating dinner into our like dinnertime routine of cleaning everything up. And that means that by like 615 We have a little bit of family time. And then our kids are getting ready for bed like 645, seven o'clock at the latest and we hit into that bedtime routine. Now if I know you're sitting here going, Patricia, that sounds like a lot of things to figure out. I got you.
Patricia Sung 11:50
Do you wish there was a way to feel like you're not failing at life and motherhood every day. I know what it's like to run around all day like a headless chicken stressed because you're late to everything. And when you finally sit down after the kids are in bed, you think about how you didn't get anything done. And somehow your to do list is longer than when you started out this morning. You're tired drowning in feel like you'll never catch up. But imagine this. When you sit down at the end of the night. There's no mound laundry, you know, it's for dinner, you spend some quality time with your kids and Medusa mom didn't even rear her ugly head at bedtime. And you did something kind of just for yourself today. If you did even one of those things today, you'd be thrilled right? It's not a fairy tale, Mama. There are other moms with ADHD getting their days together, in you can do. That's why I created time measure mastery for ADHD moms where I teach you how to create a rhythm for your day in an ADHD friendly way that puts the lengthy To Do List of motherhood on automate. So you don't have to think about when you'll sleep next, or how you'll find time to pay that bill you've been putting off, you'll be able to make a plan for your day that it's fluid enough for your ADHD brain to stick with been structured enough to feel like you're in control. Remember our rhythms and routines serve us not the other way around. Over the next 11 weeks you will create a flexible framework for your day and walk away with a community of moms who understand you energy cheering you on and say I am right there with you. Because being a mom is hard, we will get off track. That's just part of ADHD. But now you will have the support to get back on track. When you are struggling. We meet weekly to help us remember oh yeah, we're working on a goal. Most importantly, you'll learn about how your ADHD brain works so that you make decisions from a place of competence because a healthy mama leads a healthy family. Being proactive comes from a place of strength, which takes a ton of strain off your relationships because you are in a better place. When you're ready to lighten your load by making a daily plan and figuring out what makes sense for your ADHD brain and enjoying more of your motherhood. It's time to sign up for the time management mastery for ADHD moms program to program starting right now. Hello immediate gratification. So sign up right now at bit.ly/adhdframework. That is bit.ly/adhdframework. And that's all lowercase letters bit.ly/adhdframework. So sign up now before you forget, okay. I can't wait to help you feel good about your day. But more importantly, I want you to feel good about yourself. Sign up at bit.ly/adhdframework.
Patricia Sung 14:43
Going back to what's next, like what's your actual homework, here's what you're gonna do. I want you to think ahead for your summer look at the next three months. It might help you to print out like Google printable calendar and print out the next three months or you can just draw it on a piece of paper. Nothing fancy here in March. count like, when are you going on vacation? Do you have like any kind of like swim lessons or camps or activities and like, fill that in. And then you'll see how many days you have left that are empty. How many weeks are there, so say your summer is 10 weeks long. And then once you've, you know, taken out all the other activities, say there's like 60 days left that you got to fill stuff with, then you can decide how are you going to fill those days.
Patricia Sung 15:26
Some people like to do like themed days, like every Monday, we go to a playground, explore around town, find all the playgrounds, check them all out. And it doesn't have to be just your family. Like you can meet a friend at the playground. You can mix it up, you can drive to the next town. 20 minutes over check out a playground, they're like, check out an indoor playground one time like it doesn't have to be lame and boring, because every Monday you go to playgrounds, but that takes the decision fatigue out for you. Because you don't have to worry like what are we going to do today? I don't know what should I pack by the time we actually figure out what's going on. It's like almost time for lunch, then you don't go anywhere speaking from experience. Another option is you can have kind of like a choose your own adventure on Sunday where like you have mapped out of like this week, I have four empty days, I'm going to write down these four activities. And then on Sunday, I'll figure out what I'm going to do based on like whether or not it's raining, how I'm feeling, and philomon started the week, which one's gonna go on which day, but just so you have like a rough idea.
Patricia Sung 16:20
Generally speaking, in our week, we plan for there's usually like one day that has some kind of like lesson or activity or camp or whatever, I try to plan two or three outside of the home activities like going on playdates Arboretum, playground, museums, splash pads, that kind of thing, where that's like a lot more energy expenditure. And then one or two activities that are home, but usually outside. And sometimes that's just walking around the neighborhood, or like playing in the sprinkler or doing some craps, or having a movie day, I just find that if we like are at home too much, their energy is too much for me. So we got to get out the house. If you have those 60 days planned out, you don't have to like say like August 3, we are definitely going to the museum, it doesn't have to be like that. But I want you to have like 60 ideas in your head. And that doesn't mean you need 60 new ideas it can be there's 10 weeks. So once a week, we're gonna go to the splash pad in this neighborhood. Like, that's fine too. So you don't have to think of like actually 60 ideas like you can say we're gonna do this thing five times, check off five boxes, right, but have a rough idea of what you can be doing so that you're notscrambling at the last minute to decide. And also this calendar is not written in stone, if you find this really cool park and you want to change in go there more often, like go for it. But the point is to have a plan instead of just like, I don't know what we're gonna do today, like, have some where where you're going to pull these ideas from that it's not making you do the effort every day.
Patricia Sung 17:55
Now in terms of like our schedule for the day of like time aims. We follow that schedule, like no matter what, it doesn't matter if I have the kids that day, if my husband has kids that day, if I'm working that day, and I've got childcare scheduled, a babysitter follows that schedule, like everybody follows that rough schedule. It is not like military time. It's not like at precisely 12:07pm sandwiches, enter mows, but I know that roughly around noon, everybody's eating, which means I know roughly around 1130 I need to be stopping what I'm doing and heading towards the kitchen to get sandwiches ready. Or I know that I need to stop whatever fun activity we're doing outside and say let's find a bench and sit down and eat because that keeps my kids in better moods. Hangry kids, no good hangry Mom, no good.
Patricia Sung 18:53
Now if you're thinking, Oh, this is a lot to start with it is I don't want you to do all these things at one time. I want you to make your rough plan for the summer of all the activities like you have a creative ADHD brain you can think of 50 ideas of what to do with your kids in like five seconds. That's not going to take you very long. When you're looking at your daily schedule. What I want you to start with is one section like let's try to always have lunch in this area when you got lunch kind of handled out okay, like let's try to make sure that we've eaten breakfast by this time or that we have dinner at this time like try to aim for your anchors to be steady your anchor times in the day those meals and then you can start building in the other things around it. Like I said I got this routines class so you can sign up for that you got some homework to do, Mama, we're going to make this summer totally doable, slightly less sanity last every day that we move forward and we'll talk soon successful all the more resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com