Bite Sized Pieces

Many neurodivergent people find broad tasks overwhelming. You might find your child struggles with what feels like an obvious series of steps to produce an outcome. You give a clear instruction, you phrase it in a particular way to prevent a PDA response, there is time to achieve it, you know there isn’t anything they’re not physically or mentally capable of doing, and yet… nope. Clean your room. Get ready for bed. Set the table. Your child might agree, then not do it. They might start, and not finish it. There might be parts missing that seem obvious to you. You might even get a very reactive response such as fight, flight, or freeze. What’s going on?

Language Matters

Does your child know exactly what you’re asking of them? Does “get ready for bed” mean the same thing to them that it means to you? If your language isn’t specific, are the expectations?

If you asked your child to get ready for bed, you might mean:

Brush your teeth, then put away your toothbrush and toothpaste
Go to the toilet, including wiping and flushing
Wash your hands and face, and make sure you use soap and facewash
Hang up any towels on the bathroom floor, even if they’ve fallen off the rail accidentally
Brush your hair, ensuring all the knots are out, and put away your brush
Put on your pyjamas
Put your dirty clothes in the washing basket
Check the water bottle on your bedside table has water in it
Make sure all the toys, blankets, books, and lights you need for sleeping are where they’re meant to be

Your child might do less than half of this list and feel ready for bed. Alternatively, your child might interpret “get ready for bed” as “run around to get any extra energy out now so you’re able to go to sleep when I tell you you need to”!

Does “clean your room” mean piling everything off the floor onto their bed so someone can vacuum, or putting everything where it ought to go, or actually tidying up and doing the dusting and vacuuming themselves?

Using specific language, until you’re sure you’re on the same page when it comes to these broad tasks, can massively reduce confusion and perceived defiance or difficulties.

Executive Function and Task Paralysis

Completing any task requires a level of executive function, which is something that many neurodivergent people struggle with. The process of looking at an overall task, even if you know what the end result looks like, and knowing how to make it achieveable, where to start, and how to do it without getting distracted, can be immense for ND people.

It’s why many people with ADHD have difficulty with meals. They know they’re hungry, and they want to eat. However, a fridge is often seen by ADHDers as containing ingredients rather than meals. The theoretical combining of the visible ingredients in various permutations to decide on a meal can be exhausting. Then there’s the process of getting out the right utensils and pans (and hoping executive function has been high enough that they’re already clean!). Preparing ingredients. Cooking things in the right way, the right order, the right timings. Then serving, and eating, and then another mammoth task-of-many-components: cleaning up. Augh!

Taking a first step into something that looks daunting is difficult.

Sometimes that is enough to cause task paralysis.

As we say in this house, “The executives are not functioning!”

Overwhelm

If a task looks tricky, a neurodivergent brain is frequently likely to blow that up into an even more significant task.

One of my kids, when asked to clean their room, looks for half-day windows, because no matter how often we tackle it she’s convinced that’s how long it is going to take. We’ve timed the task to prove otherwise, even recorded time-lapse videos (this is such a fun way to encourage ND brains to avoid inactivity during less enjoyable tasks), and yet she still thinks it takes half a day. Realistically, even at its absolute drawers-and-cupboards-need-gutting-and-sorting worst, it’s an hour or two tops.

My autistic brain by nature is problem seeking and problem solving, and where there are no problems, it will either create them, OR draw from terrible memories or pre-existing trauma.
Kristy Forbes, intune pathways

Fear of Failure

As we discuss often at More Than Quirky, neurodivergent people are conditioned to expect criticism. They receive dramatically more corrective feedback than their neurotypical peers, and generally have lower self-esteem.

When neurodivergent people look at a task that seems complicated or significant, their brains often automatically begin a risk analysis. “How am I likely to mess this up? What I am probably going to do wrong here? I’m probably going to fail at this, so what can I do to avoid that feeling?”

One option is to avoid the task altogether, whether that’s a conscious or subconscious decision. Another is to do a rough job of it, knowingly, and pretend they thought that was all that was expected of them. Or perhaps, like a team in the lead burning time as the final whistle approaches, they’ll procrastinate so it’s not their fault when you tell them they have to stop cleaning up because it’s time for school, etc. They tried, right? You made them stop!

How Can I Help?

Before all else, set aside any frustration or annoyance or judgement, and see it for what it is. This is not defiance, or laziness, or stupidity. There are aspects of neurodivergence that are frustrating for all involved, and I assure you that this difficulty with tasks is just as upsetting for your child as it is for you. Possibly… probably… even more so! Meet this challenge with understanding, acceptance, and patience. Encourage your child to do the same.

Explain to them how their brain is approaching this dilemma, and that it’s not their fault it’s tricky. Some people aren’t very fast runners. Others aren’t good at choosing birthday presents for other people. No-one is awesome at everything.

Approach large tasks that seem insurmountable with strategies such as:

Breaking it into bite sized pieces. For example, “Can you pick up any dirty washing off your bedroom floor and put it in the laundry basket?” then “Now let’s put all the books on the bookshelf…” and so on.
Visual stimuli. Regular tasks such as getting ready for school or preparing to go to bed can be drawn up as charts using images, or even checklists for readers. Many children benefit further if it’s interactive, such as moving completed items to another list, or crossing off items with a whiteboard marker. If tasks don’t have to be completed in a specific order, it can be additionally useful to write them as a word cloud, with more difficult or time consuming tasks in larger text, and quick/easy/enjoyable tasks in smaller writing (this generally only works when marking words off, otherwise tasks can easily be missed).
Make it fun! And trust me, this is a very loose concept. Putting on music while cleaning, turning on a time-lapse video so you can playback the progress at the end (and making sure you bust a few good dance moves in the middle for some giggles during playback), or doing things in an unusual way (let’s put away all the red things first, then the blue things…) can increase interest. When there’s a list of not-fun-at-all cleaning jobs to be done, we often play “The Hat Game” which is as simple as writing each job on a scrap of paper, sticking them all in a hat, then drawing them like a raffle to see who does what first.
Prevent distractions. One of the greatest distractions for neurodivergent people when doing chores is seeing something else that also needs doing. You go to clean your bedroom and begin to tidy a bedside table, find an empty glass, take it to the kitchen, see an empty milk bottle so sit down to do an online grocery order, get halfway through it and have a new email notification pop up on the screen about an excursion for school, and next thing you know you’re rummaging through school bags looking for notes (and goodness knows what you’re going to find in there that will lead to doing something else!) while your bedroom is still a mess. Set simple rules like “I will not leave this room except in an emergency until it’s finished”, and facilitate this by bringing the laundry basket in, ensuring you have a bin handy, and putting a box at the door for anything that needs to go to another room.
Body doubling has not been well researched yet, but many neurodivergent people (myself included) benefit massively by having company when tackling tasks. This body double does not need to be helping with the task, or even doing anything related. It is simply the act of having another person present that improves activation and motivation, decreases the tendency to get side-tracked, and provides co-regulation. Not all neurodivergent people will love body doubling, as some can feel judged or shamed by being witnessed when trying to do something they find difficult. But the majority will benefit from having a buddy, even virtually via video link. If you’re the person who has set the task (ie, getting ready for school) it also allows your child to check in when they’re uncertain what they ought to do next, or if they’re on the right track.