Boost Your Summer with 1 Exclusive ADHD-Friendly Family Tool
In a previous blog, I shared how I reconnected to my 2022 goals and checked in on using a Word of the Year theme to support reaching them with more ease. Now I am exploring Goals/Aims/Intentions (choose your word) for a shorter time period, specifically summertime.
What do I want to do? Where do I want to go? Who/What do I want to see?
I know from experience how quickly the lazy days of summer can blend into a hazy blur that flies by without anything on my summer list being accomplished. If I don’t put some structure around what I want to do, it often doesn’t happen.
I also know that if I don’t write down what I want to do so I can actually see it (ISIM: In Sight, In Mind), I often plan more than anyone could ever do in a lifetime, let alone in just the three months of summer!
When Identifying my summer goals, I start with three general areas:
- Wellness (Prioritizing time for fun and play to support my physical and mental fitness)
- Relationships (Prioritizing time to connect with family and friends)
- Home Projects (Identifying what I want to accomplish at home)
- **I intentionally do NOT include work/business goals in my list. That is a separate area of focus for me. My intention here is to prioritize my free time during the summer months.
Prompts!
As an ADHD Coach, I know how many good intentions can be forgotten about without a good prompt. Prompts can be anything from audible alarms when it’s time to switch from one task to another to visible post-it notes stuck on the front door to remind you to grab your lunch from the fridge before leaving for work/school. I have included several of my favorites in my ADHD-Friendly shop: https://www.adhdfriendly.com/adhd-friendly-shop/ (**As an Amazon Affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
Once you have identified what you want to achieve this summer, what prompts will you need to support yourself?
Summertime Structure: A Tool for Families with Kiddos
When my kids were small, summertime was both a long slog of open space and a wonderful break from the busy school routine (mostly because of the truce on homework battles).
To make the change in routine work better for my four small children, I created a rough schedule to follow each week. Typically one day each week had a unique outing/focus. For example, one day was designated as the day we would go to the library, another we would have a picnic, watch a movie, have playdates, etc.
To make the routine visible and editable, I put it into one of my favorite tools, a spreadsheet. We often changed it up as we went through the week, but having a rough schedule to work from made it much easier to navigate the time each day.
These are some questions I explored when I was trying to create structure around our summer schedule:
- How often do we want to go out?
- What meals do I want to plan?
- What activities do we want to do as a family?
- What programs are available in the community or at the library?
Below is an example of a weekly schedule. Full disclosure: this is a lot of structure. I needed to fill entire days with my kids at home during the summer. If your kids are engaged during the days but need structure at nights or on the weekends, I invite you to explore what you would keep, add, delete to create a structure that works for you and your family. My favorite thing about having such a framework is how easy it is to update each week.
I hope this tool creates more ease and leads to an ADHD-Friendly Summer!
ADHD-Friendly Podcast
To learn more about how I prioritize my summer, I invite you to check out Episode #39: The one where Patty Prioritizes her Summer “Time” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEjCfaR4M3gGWjuQZQUn2Yg/videos
