When ADHD Keeps the Day Running in the Background
Let me start with something real.
There are evenings when my daughter is waiting for me to join her in the living room, and I’m still at my laptop trying to finish something that should have been done an hour ago.
A LinkedIn post for next week. A newsletter that’s nearly ready.
Just one more tweak.
Just one more sentence.
Just one more clean edge.
She’s five and a half. She has no interest in content calendars. She just wants her dad on the couch while she paints my nails with pink glitter polish.
She’ll wander in quietly and lean her head against my arm.
No judgment, no frustration.
Just a soft little reminder that she’s here and I’m not, at least not fully.
That moment hits harder now because she’s growing fast.
I love being her dad, and I want her to feel it in a way that isn’t interrupted by a half-finished thought I’m afraid to lose.
But task switching hits me like a jolt of static most of the time.
If I put something down, I worry I’ll never find the thread again. My brain locks up, and I get anxious. So I cling to the task even while the person I care about most is waiting.
Most parents with ADHD know that feeling.
You think you’ll finish one draft.
You think you’ll answer one message.
You blink and twenty minutes disappear.
And now they move on because kids can’t put their needs on hold.
You’re carrying too much at once.
Anyone would feel buried in that.
Why Work Pulls Harder Than Home
Here’s the core tension.
Your brain gets structure at work. Home brings a different kind of uncertainty.
Work gives you:
Clear expectations.
Wins you can measure.
A timeline that makes sense.
Fewer emotional unknowns.
Problems you know how to solve.
Home gives you:
Homework mixed with glitter and crayons.
Routines that can collapse at any moment.
Emotional needs you can’t push aside.
Interruptions you didn’t expect.
Chores that never fully end.
Your brain goes to the place that feels easiest to manage, even when your heart wants something different.
The Open Loop Problem
If you carry a lot at work, those loops follow you home whether you want them to or not.
A deck that needs fixing.
A detail you can’t afford to forget.
A message that needs a careful reply.
A decision you keep rehearsing in your head.
A future task that sits in the back of your chest.
ADHD brains grip loops tightly.
Parenting adds more loops.
Before you know it, your evenings become a tug of war between who you are at work and who you want to be at home.
I’ve lost count of how many alarms I rely on to keep myself grounded.
School pickup.
Morning medication.
Client work with deadlines.
Even lunch on weekdays, because time blindness will swallow the whole afternoon if I let it.
Those alarms keep me anchored because without them, everything melts together.
Remote Work Made It Harder To Step Away
I’ve seen this show up for a lot of people, and it’s showing up more lately.
Your kid might play in your office.
Your laptop sits next to the TV remote.
Your cell phone carries every responsibility.
You reach for it to check the time and fall into work.
There’s no doorway telling your brain it can stop, so everything blends.
You stay half-on even when you want to be fully present.
One of my clients said something that stuck with me. She said, “Work’s the only place where I know if I’m doing a good job.”
She wanted clarity because her brain needed something to grip. That had nothing to do with loving her family less.
I understood that more than I wanted to admit.
Three Small Experiments That Actually Help
You don’t need a reinvention or a family meeting, just one gentle interruption that your brain can accept without a fight.
These three experiments help ADHD parents every week:
1. The seven-minute shutdown
Before you leave the laptop, set a timer.
Capture:
Dump every stray thought into one place.
Prioritize:
Mark the three things that matter tomorrow.
Close it:
Leave a note to tomorrow’s version of you.
“Start with the deck. Slide three first. Ignore everything else.”
Your brain calms down when it knows where to begin again.
2. One Physical Boundary
Give your brain a visual rule.
Pick one:
Put the laptop in the same spot every night.
Drop your phone in a basket during dinner.
Add a note on your keyboard that asks:
“Is this urgent, or is this anxiety?”
That pause is enough to break the spell.
3. A Five-Minute Transition
Your brain needs a moment to come down from the day.
Try:
A short walk.
A slow, gentle stretch.
A glass of water on the porch.
The same song every night after shutdown.
Five minutes can change the whole evening.
A story that still grounds me
There was a night when my daughter was sitting on the floor with her glitter nail polish and a small stack of kindergarten worksheets. She looked over and asked if I was ready. I told her I needed one more minute to fix something for work.
She waited, and I kept typing.
I lost the minute, and she lost the spark in her face.
That one hurt.
Not because she was upset, but because I knew I’d traded connection for a task that wasn’t even urgent.
I adjusted a few things after that.
Turned off notifications on weekends.
Created alarms for tasks I kept forgetting.
Put the laptop away from view from the couch.
None of it made me perfect. It made me present more often.
That’s enough.
This Week’s Reflection
Picture the version of Sunday night you want. The real one. The messy one. The one with glitter polish and half-finished homework pages.
Ask yourself what moves you one inch closer to that night.
Not a routine.
Not a plan.
Just one inch.
Your brain’s doing its best in a loud world.
Give it a handhold this week.
