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ADD, ADHD, Christmas, Festivus, gift ideas, Hannukah, humor, humour, Kwanzaa, shopping guide, Yule
How could I make gift suggestions for bipolars without also coming up with ideas for the terminally distracted? My list is for grown-ups, because I suspect most hyper kids would be happy enough with a magnifying glass, string, popsicle sticks, and a younger sibling to torture.
Of course, Rock Star parking is also a welcome gift regardless of the recipient’s diagnoses or lack thereof.
Without further ado, here are my ideas for gifts to give your (adult) ADD/ADHD friends and family members! I’m assuming, of course, that you want to give a thoughtful gift that will both show your support and cleverness.
What to Give Your – Hey, is that an albatross? Let’s go get some bubble tea and cookies! Before I forget, the insurance paperwork is overdue. Oh man, I keep forgetting to buy holiday gifts… – ADHD Friends, Lovers, and Others
- Help organizing things: Anything that needs organizing, but one thing at a time – that’s the hard part! Make a promise to help with one sizable project (e.g. The Overflowing Container Cupboard of Doom), or give a little packet of corny homemade coupons that can be redeemed for small doses of picker-upper help. Or help establish consistent places to keep things, like keys, grocery lists, utensils of all kinds, medications, etc., and install the necessary hooks, clips, and containers to make it easy.
- Planning tools and/or software: I’m a big fan of OmniFocus, but even seemingly little things can help. For example, I made a blank weekly meal menu template, which makes a big difference in how smoothly the day (and week) goes. Setting up tools like mobile apps and desktop calendar settings to include alerts that mean, “it’s time to put your shoes on” are invaluable.
- A smartphone: I couldn’t live without mine; it’s essential to keeping me organized, more or less on time, and less likely to lose stuff.
- A back door whiteboard: Use permanent marker to make a checklist for leaving the house: Did you take your meds? Shoes on? Fly zipped? Shirt right side out? Skirt tucked into panties? Got your keys, wallet, sunglasses, laptop power source, medication? Leave space for random notes with regular whiteboard markers, i.e., the growing list of things they left half-finished…
- A gift basket of random unrelated little things you think they’ll like: a Banana Guard, matchbox cars, fancy preserves, super-sticky sticky notes – you get the idea. They probably won’t catch on to why that’s funny, but they’ll still get a kick out of it.
- Gift certificates for a few sessions with an ADHD coach. If you can find one, that is. A good substitute, but only appropriate coming from close friends and family, would be spending some quality time working together to set up routines that can help address the person’s most
irritatingdistressing cognitive challenges. For example, a precise routine for getting ready in the morning – as in, what order to use what body products, hung up somewhere visible as a checklist until it’s learned by rote – can really help reduce the impact of a whole set of interrelated symptoms. In lieu of that, I’d take gift certificates for massage. - T’ai Chi, yoga, bellydance, or skateboarding lessons: Attention is controlled by the same parts of the brain that control balance, among other things, and those parts of the brain tend to be undersized in people with ADHD. However, by training the brain, you can stimulate neural development. Doing exercises and activities that develop physical balance is a triple win, as exercise and practicing focus are also beneficial.
- Drumsticks: they’re always tapping their fingers or feet as it is; might as well see if that can translate into a lucrative musical career, right?
- Super-sticky sticky notes: they stick on dusty car dashboards, lunchboxes, mirrors, you name it. And they actually stay, while remaining completely removable! With these sticky notes, those essential notes-to-self won’t fall down and get lost in the cat hair, they’ll just get ignored or forgotten.
- I know there was a 10th thing, but I can’t quite remember it right now. I’m sure if I just go back upstairs to the other computer, I can figure it out, and I will certainly remember to update this with that thing I forgot once I remember what it was…
Disclaimer: if you can’t figure out what advice is a joke and what’s serious, buy some chocolates or underwear for your loved one and be done with it – I won’t be held accountable for any damage you do! Exercise good sense and pick gifts that are suitable given your relationship; bosses probably shouldn’t give bellydance lessons to their supervisees unless they run a Persian dance club, and even sticky notes might be pushing it. Good productivity management software, however, and instruction/co-learning in how to use it, would be totally appropriate (especially if they’re not singled out as needing “special help,” mmmkay?)
Oh yeah, that 10th thing… A numeric keypad home entry system, because I can’t lose a numeric code the way I lose house keys.
DeeDee,
You know I’m completely sold on the skateboarding idea. As my post so eloquently said, it did so much good for my son’s life in general, and his ADD.
Le Clown
Anything that promotes exercise and balance will help – and that probably goes for everyone, not just those gifted with highly variable attentiveness.
Wow that was a really good list . . . I got distracted at number 2, checked out Omnifocus which led to checking out other websites, and then I ended up on Amazon and decided to buy some stuff except I forgot to pay bills so I looked for my bills and I found a coupon for Sonic so I took the coupon . . . I’ll come back.
You so get me!
I totally do that all the time. I mean seriously, just like that. On the plus side, as long as I don’t have time constraints or deadlines (ha!) I can be super-productive when I’m DistractoGirl. Well, at least with the stuff I actually finish…
Damn! Thanks for reminding me to take my meds! I put all kinds of reminders everywhere, but then the effect decays and I don’t look at them. I’m going to go take my meds RIGHT NOW before I forget
Absolutely! I always marveled at the stupidity of trying to remember to take meds that help me remember when they have worn off so I can’t remember.
Thank science for extended release dextroamphetamine salts – I can’t believe no one gave me an ER stimulant sooner! It’s made a huge improvement. Less brain jolt as it wears off too too…
I can’t use cell phone alarms to remind me to take meds, since it’s not always in my pocket. I bought a wristwatch with an alarm specifically to remind me to take my PM meds and that’s working pretty well. So long as I preload my pocket pill case (as opposed to the breakfast table 7-day extra-large pill organizer) and put it in my pocket first thing in the morning, that is.
It takes so many little deliberate, carefully ordered interdependent steps to make this stuff work. I marvel at how easy that is for most people.
I can’t tell you how much better it makes me feel to know that there is one other highly educated person out there who has to go to extreme lengths to remember to do something life saving. Sorry it has to be you, but you can take some comfort in knowing you help me feel better….:-)
Trust me, it makes me feel better to have you say as much. I’m the only bipolar person around me, so I’m always feeling alone on that stuff. And I never believe people who say they have ADD unless I see them actually behave like they have ADD; too many people just throw that around casually!
Can I add to it? a tab-blocker: an app that prevents you from opening a new tab after a certain number of already opened tabs… my computer does it, but only because I am using a dinosaur that stopped working properly. I get very frustrated, but it slows me down, and definitely helps when I get overly distracted, so I am sure it is a great feature indeed!
Oooh, I like it! I bet there’s something like it already if you look hard enough. I know there are ones for blocking the web or specific sites that are big time-sucks. I just never had the patience to try setting any of that stuff up.
I’m OCD-ish enough about neatness (compensating much?) that I don’t like there being more tabs open than will show in the window bar, so that little twitchy tendency keeps me from having too many tabs going.
The more I read, the more I love. What can I say, it’s refreshing to see someone with such a practical approach to ADHD and/or Bi-Polar and to still have your humor in tact. Although, I will state this to add to your humor….. I did the whole “gifting my spouse” with organizational items. That worked for a whole 2 seconds before it became forgotten clutter. LOL! I did find that the less of anything he has, the better. Less stuff, less tools, less papers, less clothes…… Less to organize! HA!
The “less stuff” strategy seems a pretty sound one! I think that’s one reason I continually de-clutter. The organizational stuff only works if you’re willing to build the routines that make them useful, and that does require some initial effort to change habits. If you can get that far, though, it’s so much easier to manage a lot of the details.
Funny lol
“Oh yeah, that 10th thing… A numeric keypad home entry system, because I can’t lose a numeric code the way I lose house keys.”
I locked myself out two days ago cause I went to the building’s basement to do laundry and forgot to take the keys with me
I have at least 5 or 6 house keys. I keep one in every purse and backpack that I use regularly so that I don’t lock myself out.
AND we have a keypad garage door opener with a spare key hanging right inside the door. Just in case I still manage to lock myself out!
I don’t actually lose my house keys so much as forget to take them out of the house with me…
Yeah, I lock myself out all the time because I forget to bring the keys with me. And I’m constantly misplacing things too. And I end up sitting outside for hours till my daughter is done teaching so she can come open the door