Question
My 6 year old son seems to have some anxiety lately. My husband said he’s had it for a while, but I only noticed it recently with these two examples: 1) we were leaving a family party where he was playing with his brother and a cousin. I gave them a 5 minute warning that we were leaving. Afterwards, they begged for 5 more minutes, and I told them fine, but not to ask again because we would in fact leave after the next 5 minutes. After the next 5 minutes, I found his cousin and brother playing and told them it was time to leave. I couldn’t find my son though. Then, I did. He was curled up in a ball in the living room crying saying that he couldn’t find anything to do in the 5 minutes.
2) We went out of town last weekend. On Monday, I was packing up, but we weren’t leaving for another hour or so. He cried and kept saying he didn’t want to leave. I told him, we aren’t leaving right now. Go have fun and he just couldn’t. He paced around and just couldn’t really enjoy himself. Also, I noticed throughout the weekend, he had a checklist in his head of things he wanted to do, so he couldn’t fully enjoy the moment! Even when we were on the boat, which was one of the things he wanted to do, he was worried we wouldn’t have time for other activities later. He has ADHD, and I know that timers stress him out… we tried using it for homework and he just can’t focus with the timer around - he gets very stressed. FYI, I’m trying what you told me regarding homework, but I’m not showing him the timer. Any advice on this would be great, as I want him to live in the present and not be worried about the future. Thank you!
answer
Ouchie...unfortunately this behavior that you are describing is the result of his ADHD brain. It's not so much that he is living in the future. It's that he is overwhelmed with making a decision in the time crunch or the special vacation he has worked up in his head.
Difficulty with decision making is a symptom of ADHD. Why?
1. Difficulty switching between tasks.
2. Difficulty with flexibility of thought - being able to see ALL the possibilities and working back to the singular important one.
3. Working memory - to plan on what he can do he needs his memory to show him all the possibilities and his working memory is not at 100%.
4. NO SENSE OF TIME - most of us build an internal sense of what 10 minutes are like. People with ADHD do not have this ability. This is why timers work for most people with ADHD. However, it seems that for your son, not knowing or not having a sense of when the time ends just spins him into feeling nervous and scared, so making that decision of what to do becomes impossible and nerve wracking.
What can you do to help?
1. Create a list with him of what he can do in 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes and 60 minutes.
Keep it on your phone. When you say "hey we have 10 minutes" then show him the lists and have him pick one of those things. He can't do this on his own. He is too young. As he gets older and he practices this with you enough he can come up with his own way of being certain of what can work.
2. To help him not be too afraid of time, play the "how long does this take” game”.
What game is that you wonder?
a. You choose three tasks: for example pouring a glass of water, brushing teeth, making a bed.
b. You each guess how long the task will take.
c. Then you take turns doing the task at normal pace while he holds a stopwatch. Most phones have one.
d. Then you see who guessed the time right.
e. Do this with him while he does the task.
Play this game a lot with different tasks and he will begin by remembering that in the game the task took 10 minutes, not because he has a SENSE for it but because you recorded how long it took when playing the game.