DD12 lies and hides things every time she's asked to do anything

[drspouse]

Whenever DD is asked to put away clothes she hides them - in one of the many cupboards we have e.g. where I keep my out of season clothes, under her bed, in the attic, many places, too many to search.
She has form for this with every task she's asked to do yes I've done it but she's walked out the room with something she's supposed to put away and she leaves it on the floor.
She's doing it at school as well, her first instinct seems to be to lie rather than actually do the job.
Screen time is a privilege not a right but she doesn't seem to care if she gets it, and usually lies about having done her jobs around the house. We can watch her if she's hoovering etc but we can't search every cupboard every time she has clothes to put away!
Full story here is that she's 12, she has done this ever since she worked out how to lie, she's been diagnosed with ADHD and we're on a waiting list for medication.

Leave her clothes where she hides them. She will need to go and get them when she runs out of clothes.

I have a dyslexic DC who has never been able to tidy up. As a 5-6 year old they would tidy their stuff away under the bed, at the back of the wardrobe, anywhere except for where it was supposed to be. Then they’d get really upset (generally not a particularly moany child) when they were questioned about it. I took the task of tidying up and putting things away off them as soon as I recognised it was a problem for them. At 18 they still find it overwhelming but can now do it.

She just wears the same clothes again and again. Including socks and pants!

It sounds like it's down to her ADHD, and she lies to try to avoid getting into trouble.

It's not just tidying up though. She can tidy if someone checks frequently, or I'm helping or tidying in the next room.
But e.g. I see she's left her glasses and homework in the front room, I tell her to put them in her school bag and instead she puts them on the floor just outside the front room/on the coat rack/shoves them behind the coat rack. Then says she's done it and then goes to school without them.
Also, I'm not running around the house picking up every sock and book and tissue that Madam drops on the floor. I have better things to do!

Well doh. But yes, so what do I do about it?
Do everything for her? Accept that she's not going to learn anything at school because she can't see the board and won't do her homework or take it in?

When you say to her to put clothes away, do you tell her where? Eg here’s your socks, put them in your sock drawer. Here’s your school tops, hang them in the wardrobe.
I would break down the task and help her to begin with - I’ve had to do this for my neurodivergent DC. They can get overwhelmed by the task, procrastinate, or get distracted. Their executive functioning can be affected by the neurodivergence.
If you create a routine of doing the washing/drying/putting away of clothes on set days too, that may help.

School should be making reasonable adjustments to support her. She should be sat at front of class, in clear sight of the board. Teacher should regularly check in that DD understands what to do and the steps to take to achieve it.

@anonymoususer9876

I quite often do that but not always: e.g. I'll ask where X is going or say "remember sports kit is going with school uniform".
She'll say yes yes and then I go upstairs and find she's shoved teddies, sheets and 5 dirty pairs of pants in her school uniform drawer so there's no room for the sports kit!
I am very impressed with the advice of ADHD Dude who suggests photos of what things should look like/the order of tasks/where things should go but we do these and she just ignores them and lies about doing it. I mean it's bloody obvious she hasn't hung up her towel but she still tells us she's done it.

DS has a very strict routine of doing his washing e.g. every Saturday he brings down his wash basket. DD will avoid doing hers for as long as possible so she always waits for him to do it. Then e.g. if he does his on Sat morning and delays hanging it up because he's out, she won't put hers on and then we forget to remind her (no WAY would she ever do it without reminding). Then she doesn't hang it up and we remember she hasn't done it at bedtime when we come to put ours on.
Yes, our household is disorganised but we spend so much time running about taking the DCs to clubs and trying to find things they have lost (mainly DD) that we have no time or brain space to get anyone in a routine.

And before everyone asks, no, neither of us have ADHD, our DCs are adopted, and DS has actually got much greater needs than DD (specialist school, has direct payments for his high level of needs).

Well they do but she still needs to wear her glasses and do her homework!

It's exhausting but I end up micromanaging. Step by step instructions and I try to remember to check everything DC have done. DD wears contact lenses and trying to get her to remember to put her glasses in her bag in the morning is a nightmare. In her head she can currently see and absolutely can't plan ahead for if she loses a contact and needs to switch to glasses.

I do know the planning ahead is part of it!
She can forsee what will happen if she doesn't take her raincoat and it rains on the walk to the bus but she absolutely cannot forsee what will happen if she hides all her pants and socks.
ADHD Dude talks about being your child's frontal lobe and how to stop that, but currently we're her arms, legs and eyes as well!

I think - be precise. Hand her something and say 'hang this up in your wardrobe. Put this in your drawer.' And watch her do it. But you do need to tell her what you expect, don't use language like 'put this away' or 'tidy this up.'

Source: I have ADHD (diagnosed in my sixties). My mother used to say vague things like 'tidy your room'. She never told me WHAT needed tidying - it looked perfectly tidy to me. She'd then lose her shit at me for not doing precisely what was in her mind for me to do, when I had absolutely no idea. Similar with 'clean the bathroom.' To me, it WAS clean! She meant, wipe out the baisin, put bleach down the toilet, refill the toilet roll holder - so why didn't she SAY THAT! I spent most of my childhood in trouble for not doing what I didn't even know I was supposed to be doing!

Just my twopennyworth, but your DD might be feeling the same as I did (very very confused, usually).

Could you try a slightly different approach?
eg DD, go get your school bag and come back here
(Hopefully she comes back with bag)
Now put your glasses and home work in your bag (you can see her doing it)
Then tell her to put her bag back to where it was.
I do sympathise - it is hard work!

I used to have a large post it note on the front door with a checklist on it to try to help them remember things. It sometimes did, but not always.

As for the putting things away in their room, I just let them get on with it. DH would get cross and have a pop now and then but I knew that DD wasn’t doing it with the intention to annoy us, it was just the way her brain works. She has now as a young adult developed her own strategies that help her. She uses apps to help her organise. She still uses a whiteboard in her room to help organise herself too.

I don't have huge amounts of advice but I was very like this as a teenager. Demand avoidance for me - the second I was asked to do something everything in my entire being didn't want to/couldn't, even if I knew I was going to get in trouble. It's something I still struggle with now, to be honest!

Maybe look up some strategies for dealing with demand avoidance and see if they help?

I missed a post whilst I was posting. If there isn't a routine DD will be all at sea anyway. You need one. Why is she doing her own washing at 12 with adhd? Surely the whole family has a basket and when there is a load someone (probably an adult) puts it on to wash rather than everyone having individual washing times? If she can't plan to take her glasses to school so she can actually see, she absolutely can't plan putting a wash on to have clean clothes. The Saturday routine of her DB is giving her a visual prompt to do her washing. She's not waiting for him to put it on. She's seeing him do it and then thinking 'oh I was meant to do that!'

This is quite common in adhd. Not being able to task manage and start a task and see it through. I work with a lot of adhd people with this difficulties they often get diagnosed as depressed or seen as lazy. It’s as The task seems too daunting/tiring/boring so it’s put off. The tasks need to be even smaller to help her do it start to end. She needs to practice starting a task and seeing it to the end but you need to start small to allow her the chance to see she can accomplish it

She's in secondary school. Let her face the natural consequences of her choices. I would also retrieve anything deliberately put in the wrong place, put it in a bin liner in the garden shed, and deny all knowledge of it with a breezy “oh I remember you taking that to our away darling, it must be in your wardrobe".

I think you might just need to treat her like she's a lot younger than she is. Remind, supervise, make a chart, maybe even have a reward chart?

The other thing I would do is do the tasks WITH her, but not FOR her. So for example, if the homework and glasses have been left on the side I would call her to tidy them into her school bag and then go with her to put them in her school bag so that she doesn't have the opportunity to dump them somewhere else. The same with the washing etc. It sounds like she needs to train the habit of actually doing completing a task and also experience the benefits of doing a task to completion.

I know this is extremely time intensive and not what you want to be doing with a 12 year old, but I think probably necessary given her ADHD diagnosis and potentially complicating factors related to being adopted.

Look up body doubling. It will help your daughter get her chores done. I appreciate it can be hard but give it a try. Also music helps. Look up the dubbi app.

Does she have pocket money? Someone on here was saying that their child has an amount/week but they have to do basic being part of the household things (e.g washing away the day it’s left outside their room etc) or that amount just quietly ticks down (they have a book by the front door). I’m thinking of doing similar.

How old is your son?

Why is she doing her own laundry, separately? I wash everyone's clothes together, I do a load most days. I'll ask one of the DC to hang it out/put it away.

I think if you want her to do her own laundry, you need to give her a set day and support her until it becomes a habit. DD, it's Tuesday evening, let's get your washing done.

My DS went through a phase of this.

totally neurotypical.

dealt with in a. Number of ways:

solid morning routine. He had to use a disclosing tablet and I watched him take it so then he had to clean his teeth. Breakfast either he made or we had breakfast bars in the car.

we jointly checked his bag every night before bed to make sure it had what he needed in it.
he showered mostly in the evening and he went through a phase of pretending he had so we used ip check if the shower was wet and whether his hair smelt.

laundry bin in his room and in the bathroom. Clean laundry delivered back to his room so we knew it was in his room somewhere/

separate bags for clothes/equipment for stuff eg swimming had a box, martial arts had a box etc.

again we mostly checked in the evening.

we had a cleaner once a week so Monday night was tidy up night for everyone and anything of his was put in a plastic box (the “pig” box) for his room. Same for our room and our daughters room.

meant at least once a week everything was cleared from downstairs.

shoe stand and coat hangers in the hall and stuff hung up immediately.

Why shouldn't she do her own washing? She needs to learn to be independent and she can manage all the steps. DS who has much larger difficulties was doing it at her age.
It's really important for DCs with ADHD to learn responsibilities early - to be useful and competent in ways that they can be. She's capable of all the steps and does them well individually. Learning to sequence the steps will also help her to learn to plan - you can't learn anything by sitting down and reading about it - you have to learn my doing.

Reward charts work for about 5 minutes. A routine of when to do what actually works for the most part on a daily basis (e.g. practice maths book from school, brush teeth) but any less frequently and she forgets or the reward doesn't seem worth it.

So if it's "put your wash on today and then later you can hang it up and then you can put it away before Scouts [or "so you can get a sticker"]" then she just doesn't care about the sticker or gets so worked up about the task that she starts shouting I DON'T CARE I DON'T WANT TO GO TO SCOUTS, or again lies and says she's done it.

But having another DC with even greater needs and me working (DH is retired but seems busier than ever as is usually the case) and there comes a point when we are just too tired to follow her around like a toddler.

Plus I think we'd have to e.g. ban her from being in her room on her own as she does things like hide her glasses/homework, try and log into an old phone she found in the drawer so she can use it without time limits, get up after bedtime to take toast to her room etc etc.

Sorry I'm a bit fed up at the moment as DH has taken her to PGL and we realised she hid her glasses AGAIN before going and he didn't check she had them.