Reddit reviews Laminated Jumbo Wall Calendar

To understand ADHD, think of your ability to manage multiple thoughts at once. You're taking a shower in the morning and in the back of your mind while you're washing your hair, you make a to-do list for yourself. You need to finish your morning ablutions. Then you need to get dressed, and you decide what to wear and make a note in your mind of where it is. The hosiery you need is in the dryer. You also need to load and run the dishwasher before you leave the house. You're almost out of milk; there might not be enough of it for breakfast this morning, so you make a mental note to check before pouring the cereal. Maybe you'll make eggs instead.

Without ADHD, you can remember all that and more. You have enough slots in your working memory for all those things, and new stuff that comes up while you're accomplishing the list isn't going to bump anything off it. You get out of the shower, finish up, get dressed, grab your socks out of the dryer and put them on, load the dishwasher and turn it on, check the milk, realize there isn't enough, make eggs instead, eat, and leave. You do all this while maintaining conversations with people and helping your kids get ready.

With ADHD, things get bumped off your mental list. It hasn't got enough space for all that. While you're shaving you legs, your mind wanders and you forget you need to load and turn on the dishwasher before you go. You spend too long in the shower making sure your ankles are stubble-free. Then you get out of the shower, finish up, and get dressed. You forget where you were going to get socks from when one of your kids interrupts you. You solve your kid's problem and then spend an extra five minutes hunting in your disorganized sock drawer for two matching socks. They aren't there so you give up. You forget you're low on milk and pour the cereal, then run out of milk. You put the eggs on the stove, and then remember where the socks were. You go get the socks and burn the eggs. While you're eating burnt eggs the kids interrupt you again so you go deal with that. You walk by the bathroom and realize you forgot to brush your teeth and go back to the bathroom. You forgot to finish eating breakfast. You go back to the kitchen and load the dishwasher halfway. You're running late. You leave. The kitchen is a horrible mess, you get to work late, you're hungry, and your kids didn't brush their teeth... but at least you're clean and dressed, with matching socks. That's a victory, right?

One solution for ADHD children and adults is routine and structural support. Nothing can be done about the lack of space on the mental list. All they can do is offload. Offload as much as possible. Use timers and lists, hire housekeepers, make strict budgets, stick to religious routines, forbid interruptions at certain times of day, meditate daily, turn off that distracting music, put labels on your shelves, get extra childcare, and have a system for everything. Make a laundry hamper system so everything is sorted into the right bin as soon as it's taken off. Make a meal-planning routine; every Tuesday is tacos. Buy giant packages of ONE kind of sock- every last sock the same colour- so you're never hunting through the drawer for a sock mate while something else falls off your mental list. Put a giant dry-erase wall calendar up in the hallway with big colour-coded reminders for anything that isn't routine. Anything that takes something off the mental list and puts it in the physical world can be a helpful solution.

Not everything is going to stick. Keeping a notebook in your pocket might not work because it'll turn out you always forget to update it or you'll leave it on the counter in a public restroom somewhere. Try the big laminated wall calendar next. Maybe remembering to pin pairs of socks together before washing them is unrealistic, so you'll give up on that, throw out all your colourful socks, and buy 30 of the same sock. Don't give up. Just keep trying solutions until something works, and then keep doing it. Once you've got enough of those solutions in place for them, you might find that your kids have enough focus left over at the dinner table to make an effort to remember their manners.

This is the one I have.

Have you considered getting something like this? Prices vary from store to store, but it might make it easier in the long run to have something similar. Or, if you have a teacher supply or craft store like Michael's nearby, they usually have stuff around this time for back to school.

Or use a piece of poster paper that has grid lines, go over them in Sharpie (like a 2" by 2" square) and then have it laminated so you can use dry erase marker over it for the dates/events each month?

If you have access to an RA resource room, you could use a die-cut machine (if it has one), and make the letters for each month of the school year using that to give it some color. You could even make border for each month with die-cuts of leaves and other seasonal stuff. (My RA resource room had various die-cut shapes that were always fun to use.)

Hope this helps! :)