Bee.In.Harmony

01/19/2026

"Help! My three year old AuDHDer is at the point that all they will eat is mac-and-cheese, and I don't want her to get into the mindset that she can waste food, or that it's okay to eat like this??"

Yep, it's Missed Skills Monday!!, and today we're covering a parenting skill that may also help you feel validated with your eating habits and past experiences 💜

____________________

First, know that this phase is completely normal for every kid, so the difference will really be intensity and duration for your neurodivergent.

Here are some healthy mindsets to adopt as you try to help them navigate food!

____________________

1) Fed is best

Lose the neuronormative ideologies that aren't even really helpful for neurotypicals,

let alone neurodivergents.

If they are fed, you are doing a good job;

Anybody who shames you about this without providing

genuine resources,
actually constrictive feedback,
or who uses the word "just,"

it's a safe bet you can immediately discredit their opinion because they clearly have no idea what it means to be parenting kids in a way that is neuroaffirming.

____________________

2) Follow the advice of food psychologists;

There are some who are also content creators and they do understand how to really help your kid be explorative with food rather than shut down.

A lot of it involves play and understanding how the senses HAVE to be engaged in order to understand.

- Let them pick it up, play with it, feel the texture.

- Let them smell it and put it back.

- Let them put it to their lips, put it back, lick their lips

- let them have a very tiny portion of the food held in their mouth before they spit it back out

- let them have a tiny bite and swallow before eventually progressing to bigger swallows.

What's fascinating is that this process is precisely how human beings have evolved for hundreds of years to test whether a food is safe or not;

When you look at it from this angle, neurodivergents are genius adults!

Young kids - if I recall correctly before the age of four - have significantly more refined taste buds because of the way their brain has not yet engaged in the synaptic pruning process.

As a result "things taste weird" is completely valid for little ones...
..and explains why adults don't get the same heebie-jeebies over certain tastes and even certain textures.

At least not to the same extent as kids.

It also explains why at multiple times throughout your life your "taste buds change"...

(They don't really, but you become less sensitive compared to when you were a kid and as a result you may find yourself feeling more experimental as you get older.)

____________________

3) This means NO STRESS!!

This "picky phase" doesn't last too long for neurotypical kids,

and even for neurodivergents!,

Though they absolutely will have preferences for safe foods and avoid others for their entire life;

It doesn't mean that the only thing they will ever be able to eat again will be chicken nuggets (in most cases of course).

So for now, this is where they're at;

The more you can honor their autonomy, the less likely they will be to develop trauma around it which can lead to serious consequences like ARFID.

____________________

4) How to introduce a new food:

- if you are making their plate for them, introduce only one new food at a time;

make the rest of the food on their plate safe

- Let that new food be the new food for at least a week;

allow them to play with it,
experience it on a sensory level...

- Absolutely no pressure to try it, to eat it, to "finish the plate"...

Nada.

If after a week they haven't tried it, you can ask them about their sensory experiences: what did It feel like in the fingers? What did it smell like? What did it look like?

(When you have younger kids you can ask these questions and experience the sensory play together throughout the week;

when you have older kids it's more important to avoid perceiving them and instead just let them make their own decisions about it. Maybe guide them through the process the first time by asking the occasional question, but otherwise leave it to them.)

- once you've done this with a new food for a week or two (timeframe acc. to YOUR kiddo!) then you repeat the process with a new food.

The goal is to create an unpressured environment with ZERO expectations.

____________________

5) As they get older, you may want to move to a buffet style;

either they serve themselves

or you still serve them but they tell you what they're going to put on the plate.

THE RULE: they have to eat whatever they choose to put on the plate;

They can go back as many times as they would like for seconds and thirds, but whatever they take, they eat.

Anything leftover is put in the fridge for the next time they get hungry, and they do have to eat that specifically.

(This part is a bit neuronormative, but your goal IS to teach that food waste has consequences;

if it takes them a couple days to finish that food, so be it, obviously not to the point of illness, again, you know your kid best.)

This is to help them understand their bodies,

to develop a sense of interoception,

and give them a chance to learn what it means to eat,

To feel satiated,

and to feel overfull.

You can also educate about what it means to have a balanced diet:

There are foods that make our body feel good;

There are foods that make our mind feel good...

BOTH are important.

Technically you can start teaching this earlier as well, but it depends on where they are at in their struggling process.

____________________

Getting kids involved in the kitchen earlier than later can also be a big help:

It gives them a chance to play with the food through preparation so they understand what is going into the food they are eating...

Bonus: they may develop an appreciation for the work!

You can start very young kids with wooden knives, and if you're worried about your neurodivergent kids, keep the recipes simple and experimental;

Give them the creative freedom to throw things together and analyze together what does and doesn't work, what affects putting the food together in a certain way has, etc.

____________________

For more neuroaffirming mindsets towards food, I highly recommend following Liam Layton and Applesauceandadhd

01/17/2026

And of course, here is the Part 2 recap: intersectionality.

(If you're looking for Part 1: marginalized communities, it's here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14Wo5pVnVuF/)

All this is obviously affected by what's happening in the states -

but it's important to recognize it happens EVERYWHERE;

We can't let us fall into the trap where we think that because we're "not as bad here" it means that we get a pass to not do the work.

In this first part, I'm addressing bigotry by being vulnerable about my growth and where I started.

Yes, they're long reads, so save 'em, come back to them, let them sit, scan them...

They're broken up for easier reading, and

Remember:

Your goal is not to be perfect, it's to have an overall upward trend.

__________________

PART 2: RECOGNIZING THE OVERLAP

Intersectionality

What does that even mean?

Recognizing the overlap in marginalized communities, which are

Communities with experiences that are different than the social norm.

People think it means recognizing you can be

Asian and autistic,

Non-binary and disabled,

Black, disabled, and an ADHDer...

People think it means recognizing

the experience of intersectionalized people

means their experience is even more unique, even more of an outlier's.

Yes.

AND

IT'S ABOUT RECOGNIZING THE OVERLAP.

__________________

What DOES every marginalized community face?

My view:

Bigotry.

Fixation on cures.

Burden of Communication.

These are huge overlaps with other marginalized communities, all fighting the bigotry of people who demand you be

"typical",
neuronormative,
"able-bodied",
"accommodating"

and yt-minded 😮‍💨

__________________

I see it in the neurodivergent community:

"ABA is the best, it turned my nonverbal 7 year old into saying a sentence 6 months later!"

Great. No seriously, it's great your child isn't running out into the road.

But you're ignoring that your child is now developing people-pleasing defense mechanisms that will render them helpless as an adult to abuse, particularly

Financial abuse and
S*xual assault.

"That's fine, at least they're alive."

Yep.

Until they kill themselves.

It's one of the principal reasons autistics don't live past 54.

If this is acceptable to you, kindly f**k off.

"ADHD requires medication, you must only be a little attention deficit if you don't need it."

Ignoring that medication is a tool of choice, that

coping mechanisms and supports are healthier,

ADHD is a spectrum of intensity in traits, not intensity in condition,

ADHD has nothing to do with a deficit in attention,

In fact we're only able to pay attention to things that MATTER to us.

__________________

I see it in the auditory processing community:

"You have CAPD? Just get a hearing aid, these ones help reduce background noise, so that should be better!"

Lady, ALL noise is painful to me because I'm autistic;

unless that background noise is 100% gone I still can't pull focus (ADHD)

and I'm still in pain.

"My 3 year old just got tested for APD and has some hearing loss in her right ear, can someone advise about best steps?" - "Cochlear implants are the way to go!"

Just because you turn the volume up does not mean it "fixes" the neurological processing...

(Who says it necessarily needs fixing anyway?)

And CI are not something to take so lightly because there are serious and painful lifelong consequences of having it.

__________________

It's in the Black community:

"Educate me on what it means to be Black please... Oh don't do it in an angry way, that hurts my feelings, I just want to learn..." Proceeds to fight Black people on their experience.

People of color do not owe us their experiences, their stories, nor education.

They want US,

yt people who continue to do the work,

to educate other yt people.

And if they correct us - which hell yes that's their right if they feel so inclined - then it's our job to step back and listen.

If you don't understand their story, that's fine;

You're not required to understand.

You are required to accept it and internalize it.

(As an autistic, oh this hurts so much: "how can I understand if I don't ask questions about what I don't understand?? I don't have the data, so I don't have the context, and I'm trying so hard!!

I feel you;

Breathe.

You don't have to get it all "right now";

You're allowed to analyze what you can now;

Regurgitate and ask questions respectfully without expecting a response;

Continue reading and digging to find contradiction;

And yes, that means taking a post a yt woman like me is saying about Black people and QUESTIONING IT!!

I am just one of many resources out there,

So use this as a sign to follow Black content creators - especially Black autistic content creators - and do the work.)

__________________

We see it in the LGBTQ+ community:

"You're trans? You should just choose to be as you are, you don't need gender-affirming surgery, you just need therapy because you're sick with gender dysphoria!" ...

The actual recommendation in the DSM for gender dysphoria IS gender-affirming procedures 🙄

"You're non-binary, that means you don't want to be a man or a woman, but you were born with what you're born with."

1) S*x is different than gender,

don't confuse the two -

a person may be "assigned male at birth", but that doesn't mean their gender is male.

2) Many people don't see a world that is full of men and women (binary);

we see a world filled with people of all identifiers, and either

my gender does not fit into a binary world

or I just don't care enough about gender to adhere to it.

__________________

Every marginalized community "looks" different in terms of how it approaches solutions...

but they each have their overlapping bigotry they have to fight.

It's EXHAUSTING 😮‍💨

I'm exhausted writing this, and I know half of you were exhausted before I got to part 1 🤣😭🤗

So save them.

Come back to them.

Let them sit,

Scan them...

Remember:

Your goal is not to be perfect;

It's going have many bumps, slopes, backsides, and periods of stagnation;

Your goal with growth is just to have an overall upward trend.

01/17/2026

As promised, here is the recap of the large post I made earlier about marginalized communities!

Keep an eye out for the recap about part 2: intersectionality (https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AUFEzZdpy/)

Yes, they're long reads, so save 'em, come back to them, let them sit, scan them...

They'll be broken up as always, and I'll release them both here in this post and again later in separate parts for easier reading.

Remember:

Your goal is not to be perfect, it's to have an overall upward trend.

__________________

PART 1: MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES

It's a term people may not feel confident in using or in admitting they don't really know how to use it.

I first heard the term just a few years ago because I was raised in

yt,
neuronormative,
straight,
ableist culture,

and my less-evolved-than-now brain went to the "obvious different-looking" community...

And my only thought was, "Well I'm not racist!" 🙃🤦

__________________

I didn't dig deeper than that.

Over the last 5-10 years I have become increasingly aware as I

- first subconsciously, now consciously -

surrounded my social media with:

People of color
Disabled people
2SLGBTQIAP+ people,

seeing them represented more in real life and online, hearing their stories...

__________________

Putting myself into their shoes was something I thought I was doing well, by reading their words...

calling myself anti-racism and "not seeing color" -

after all, being raised with an Asian sister - intentionally vague for anonymity - our family grew up saying we "didn't see color";

it was our defense against a world that may have been prejudiced against her.

Calling myself anti-ableism because I believed in equal access for everyone, and I thought that always looked like one solution everyone could use.

Calling myself anti-sexism because I was a woman and therefore inherently communicative, weaker, incapable of harming another and therefore could say / do anything and it wouldn't be sexist.

__________________

The looks I give my younger self now:

😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳
🫣🫣🫣🫣🫣
😤😤😤😤😤😤😤😤
😮‍💨
🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦

__________________

The worst part is that it took me hurting someone so immensely,

For them to hold incredibly strong boundaries with self-love supported by deep anger,

For me to get started on the self-work.

And it has been quite a journey, looking more like a tree than a straight line:

Betrayal healing as the betrayer --> trauma healing --> addressing sexism

Trauma healing --> ADHD realization --> autistic realization --> addressing ableism

Autistic realization --> genderqueer & omnisexual --> transphobia

Autistic realization --> central auditory processing disorder --> Deaf community --> ableism

Ableism --> seeing intersectionality

Intersectionality --> Addressing racism --> recognizing my sister's erasure through white savior adoption

__________________

Every
single
person
on the planet

has internalized bigotry, regardless of whether or not we know it;

And we will never be "cured" of it - there will always be more discovered in the future.

Believing yourself to be a "kind person" does not make you immune to internalized bigotry -

this was my mistake, thinking this.

"Kindness" does not equal "immunity from hard work";

Kindness actually means you're the type of person who is going to actively seek out the hard work:

When you're confronted with it, and

When you recognize it's in the world and you probably don't know as much as you should.

01/17/2026

Total negligence
😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

"But Bee, my school has staff that are far better trained..."

"My son's teacher is wonderful and lets us know everything that goes on..."

"Our EA's are accommodating to our autistic kids..."

You 👏 don't 👏 f**king 👏 know.

You only know what you've been told, and what it "looks like" to outsiders when that's not at all what is happening on the inside.

Teachers are *supposed to attend professional development courses, which includes better understanding autistics, traumatized kids, refugee kids...

And they often do. Many of them pay attention. Many of them even internalize it...

And it's STILL not enough because the education that is provided is still so incredibly outdated, so incredibly unaffirming for neurodivergents and for traumatized individuals...

That educators and professionals perpetuate ideologies that harm kids, in keeping with this page, neurodivergents, particularly vulnerable people who can't advocate for themselves in the face of ableism, like non-speaking and non-verbal autistics.

An 11-year-old autistic boy begged for his mother while being confined inside what a lawsuit describes as a “makeshift classroom prison.” Hours later, he was dead.

According to a lawsuit filed by his mother, Joshua Sikes was restrained and secluded inside a makeshift enclosure at Pembroke Elementary School in Virginia Beach in October 2024. The enclosure was allegedly constructed using bookcases, shelves, and heavy-duty straps designed to restrict movement. Joshua repeatedly cried out, “I want my mommy,” and “I miss my mommy,” while staff attempted to “calm him down,” according to the complaint.

Joshua, who had autism and limited verbal abilities, reportedly laid down and began kicking and striking his head against the floor while restrained. The lawsuit alleges staff members watched and did nothing for hours. At no point, according to the filing, was a nurse called or medical help requested.

Instead, staff allegedly contacted Joshua’s mother later that afternoon and told her he was “misbehaving” and needed to be picked up. She was never told her son had been restrained. She was never told he had been banging his head. She was never told he was injured.

Believing the school, Joshua’s mother told him he would not be able to go trick-or-treating that night as a consequence for his reported behavior. The lawsuit says Joshua was devastated, unable to explain what had really happened to him or how badly he had been treated.

Over the next two days, Joshua became increasingly lethargic and withdrawn. His mother eventually took him to the emergency room, unaware of the head trauma he had suffered at school. He was discharged and told to follow up with a neurologist. Joshua never made it to that appointment.

He died in his sleep on November 3, 2024. His mother found him in bed just hours after tucking him in. The lawsuit alleges Joshua suffered brain death caused by head trauma sustained while confined in the classroom.

Local authorities investigated the death. No criminal charges were filed. Child Protective Services linked the neglect to an “unknown abuser.” The school and its employees have denied wrongdoing.

Joshua’s mother is now suing the special education provider and four employees for $150 million.

An autistic child begged for his mother. He was restrained. He was ignored. He was sent home as “misbehaving.” And he died.

If this doesn’t enrage you, it should... And if you REALLY want to do something about it, take two seconds to sign the petition the End Easy Plea Deals for those who harm children, linked below.

https://www.change.org/p/stop-plea-deals-for-child-predators

Kids deserve protection, not silence.

01/17/2026

Today's post is a DOOZY:

It's a 2-parter for today's social climate

- obviously affected by what's happening in the states -

but it's important to recognize it happens EVERYWHERE;

Don't fall into the trap where because we're "not as bad here" means that we get a pass for doing the work.

__________________

First: addressing bigotry by being vulnerable about my growth and where I started.

Second: the overlap of intersectionality

__________________

Yes, they're long reads, so save 'em, come back to them, let them sit, scan them...

They'll be broken up as always, and I'll release them both here in this post and again later in separate parts for easier reading.

Remember:

Your goal is not to be perfect, it's to have an overall upward trend.

__________________

PART 1: MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES

It's a term people may not feel confident in using or in admitting they don't really know how to use it.

I first heard the term just a few years ago because I was raised in

yt,
neuronormative,
straight,
ableist culture,

and my less-evolved-than-now brain went to the "obvious different-looking" community...

And my only thought was, "Well I'm not racist!" 🙃🤦

__________________

I didn't dig deeper than that.

Over the last 5-10 years I have become increasingly aware as I

- first subconsciously, now consciously -

surrounded my social media with:

People of color
Disabled people
2SLGBTQIAP+ people,

seeing them represented more in real life and online, hearing their stories...

__________________

Putting myself into their shoes was something I thought I was doing well, by reading their words...

calling myself anti-racism and "not seeing color" -

after all, being raised with an Asian sister - intentionally vague for anonymity - our family grew up saying we "didn't see color";

it was our defense against a world that may have been prejudiced against her.

Calling myself anti-ableism because I believed in equal access for everyone, and I thought that always looked like one solution everyone could use.

Calling myself anti-sexism because I was a woman and therefore inherently communicative, weaker, incapable of harming another and therefore could say / do anything and it wouldn't be sexist.

__________________

The looks I give my younger self now:

😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳
🫣🫣🫣🫣🫣
😤😤😤😤😤😤😤😤
😮‍💨
🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦

__________________

The worst part is that it took me hurting someone so immensely,

For them to hold incredibly strong boundaries with self-love supported by deep anger,

For me to get started on the self-work.

And it has been quite a journey, looking more like a tree than a straight line:

Betrayal healing as the betrayer --> trauma healing --> addressing sexism

Trauma healing --> ADHD realization --> autistic realization --> addressing ableism

Autistic realization --> genderqueer & omnisexual --> transphobia

Autistic realization --> central auditory processing disorder --> Deaf community --> ableism

Ableism --> seeing intersectionality

Intersectionality --> Addressing racism --> recognizing my sister's erasure through white savior adoption

__________________

Every
single
person
on the planet

has internalized bigotry, regardless of whether or not we know it;

And we will never be "cured" of it - there will always be more discovered in the future.

Believing yourself to be a "kind person" does not make you immune to internalized bigotry -

this was my mistake, thinking this.

"Kindness" does not equal "immunity from hard work";

Kindness actually means you're the type of person who is going to actively seek out the hard work:

When you're confronted with it, and

When you recognize it's in the world and you probably don't know as much as you should.

__________________

PART 2: RECOGNIZING THE OVERLAP

Intersectionality

What does that even mean?

Recognizing the overlap in marginalized communities, which are

Communities with experiences that are different than the social norm.

People think it means recognizing you can be

Asian and autistic,

Non-binary and disabled,

Black, disabled, and an ADHDer...

People think it means recognizing

the experience of intersectionalized people

means their experience is even more unique, even more of an outlier's.

Yes.

AND

IT'S ABOUT RECOGNIZING THE OVERLAP.

__________________

What DOES every marginalized community face?

My view:

Bigotry.

Fixation on cures.

Burden of Communication.

These are huge overlaps with other marginalized communities, all fighting the bigotry of people who demand you be

"typical",
neuronormative,
"able-bodied",
"accommodating"

and yt-minded 😮‍💨

__________________

I see it in the neurodivergent community:

"ABA is the best, it turned my nonverbal 7 year old into saying a sentence 6 months later!"

Great. No seriously, it's great your child isn't running out into the road.

But you're ignoring that your child is now developing people-pleasing defense mechanisms that will render them helpless as an adult to abuse, particularly

Financial abuse and
S*xual assault.

"That's fine, at least they're alive."

Yep.

Until they kill themselves.

It's one of the principal reasons autistics don't live past 54.

If this is acceptable to you, kindly f**k off.

"ADHD requires medication, you must only be a little attention deficit if you don't need it."

Ignoring that medication is a tool of choice, that

coping mechanisms and supports are healthier,

ADHD is a spectrum of intensity in traits, not intensity in condition,

ADHD has nothing to do with a deficit in attention,

In fact we're only able to pay attention to things that MATTER to us.

__________________

I see it in the auditory processing community:

"You have CAPD? Just get a hearing aid, these ones help reduce background noise, so that should be better!"

Lady, ALL noise is painful to me because I'm autistic;

unless that background noise is 100% gone I still can't pull focus (ADHD)

and I'm still in pain.

"My 3 year old just got tested for APD and has some hearing loss in her right ear, can someone advise about best steps?" - "Cochlear implants are the way to go!"

Just because you turn the volume up does not mean it "fixes" the neurological processing...

(Who says it necessarily needs fixing anyway?)

And CI are not something to take so lightly because there are serious and painful lifelong consequences of having it.

__________________

It's in the Black community:

"Educate me on what it means to be Black please... Oh don't do it in an angry way, that hurts my feelings, I just want to learn..." Proceeds to fight Black people on their experience.

People of color do not owe us their experiences, their stories, nor education.

They want US,

yt people who continue to do the work,

to educate other yt people.

And if they correct us - which hell yes that's their right if they feel so inclined - then it's our job to step back and listen.

If you don't understand their story, that's fine;

You're not required to understand.

You are required to accept it and internalize it.

(As an autistic, oh this hurts so much: "how can I understand if I don't ask questions about what I don't understand?? I don't have the data, so I don't have the context, and I'm trying so hard!!

I feel you;

Breathe.

You don't have to get it all "right now";

You're allowed to analyze what you can now;

Regurgitate and ask questions respectfully without expecting a response;

Continue reading and digging to find contradiction;

And yes, that means taking a post a yt woman like me is saying about Black people and QUESTIONING IT!!

I am just one of many resources out there,

So use this as a sign to follow Black content creators - especially Black autistic content creators - and do the work.)

__________________

We see it in the LGBTQ+ community:

"You're trans? You should just choose to be as you are, you don't need gender-affirming surgery, you just need therapy because you're sick with gender dysphoria!" ...

The actual recommendation in the DSM for gender dysphoria IS gender-affirming procedures 🙄

"You're non-binary, that means you don't want to be a man or a woman, but you were born with what you're born with."

1) S*x is different than gender,

don't confuse the two -

a person may be "assigned male at birth", but that doesn't mean their gender is male.

2) Many people don't see a world that is full of men and women (binary);

we see a world filled with people of all identifiers, and either

my gender does not fit into a binary world

or I just don't care enough about gender to adhere to it.

__________________

Every marginalized community "looks" different in terms of how it approaches solutions...

but they each have their overlapping bigotry they have to fight.

It's EXHAUSTING 😮‍💨

I'm exhausted writing this, and I know half of you were exhausted before I got to part 1 🤣😭🤗

So save them.

Come back to them.

Let them sit,

Scan them...

Remember:

Your goal is not to be perfect;

It's going have many bumps, slopes, backsides, and periods of stagnation;

Your goal with growth is just to have an overall upward trend.

01/16/2026

TL/DR: Lacking object permanence is a misnomer. Renaming & Tips included!!

When most newly realized ADHDers hear this term, it is one of the first things that instantly clicks for us:

"Yes, THAT'S what I experience!!

We latch onto it like it's an oasis in the desert of misunderstanding we've been wading through our entire lives.

But it's not actually the correct term, and it literally infantalizes our process.

________________

"Lacking object permanence" is in fact a stage of neural development every brain goes through;

The inability to understand that when an object disappears from our sight it still exists in the world.

It's why peek-a-boo works for only a certain amount of time for most brains;

we eventually catch up and realize that out of sight does not equal discontinued existence.

________________

For us ADHDers and AuDHDers, we are still aware of the object's existence;

Our minds have just decided that

its existence

is less important to us

than the existence of other objects, people, tasks, and destinations.

________________

This is why those in the medical field will not refer to this terminology and may even roll their eyes when ADHDers use it.

Instead they may use

"difficulty with memory,"
"difficulty with short-term memory,"

or potentially "short-term memory loss"...

But that doesn't quite resonate the same way, does it?

________________

I don't struggle to remember -

by the time I struggle with it,

I've already smacked myself on the coffee table because I

"forgot" it's been in the same place for 5 years;

I didn't lose my memory of the coffee table;

when the coffee table is important - like when I know my keys to leave are on it -

I very much know that it exists and consciously remember it existing.

________________

CONTEXTUAL MEMORY

I believe this is actually the secret to unlocking the power of our memory -

(and this isn't me saying it's a superpower)

but just acknowledging the way we can work with our brains rather than against them,

to empower ourselves in a skill that *could be taught,

and yet for many of us has not.

It can allow us to reclaim our understanding of what we go through and find a better term that is both

more accurate

and neuroaffirming.

________________

"I have contextual memory."

I consciously memorize

colors,
shapes,
lines,
gradients,

and textures of objects around me,

not in a compulsive way that is incredibly detailed, but in a relatable way.

"I put back my blue and white bottle of shampoo into the right corner of the shower."

"The once-spiky loofah that's losing its shape is going in its spot on the caddy."

"The small round pill bottle is next to the larger round soft drink cup on the table."

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CONTEXTUAL MEMORY RECALL

If I've noted its existence in relation to other objects, I am significantly more likely to be able to recall the object's location.

Now this still only works if I actually care about the object I need;

if it's urgent I find it;

if it's an object that is newly relevant, or an object in an area it doesn't belong to;

if it's needed for a task I'm obsessed with;

if it plays a role in my interests;

if I'm challenged in the need to remember it.

Do you see the pattern in the language being used here?

It's directly related to how our motivation as ADHDers works.
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This also explains why ADHDers struggle significantly with memory as a kid:

Your house is not your own

To rearrange;
To fill;
To explore;

It is filled with objects that are irrelevant, uninteresting.

It also explains why ADHDers of all ages struggle with using the skill I've described:

If you don't have control over your space;

If you don't have a mind that is able to sit down and prioritize object placement for the long-term;

If you aren't able to break things down into smaller tasks and then remember them or the order they could go in;

Then establishing memory,

even for tasks that are "basic executive functioning",

is the hardest thing to start,

let alone follow-through on.

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ESTABLISHING CONTEXTUAL MEMORY RECALL:

Every time you put down an object, name out-loud one characteristic of it;

choose a characteristic that is similar to a nearby object;

or a characteristic that is opposite of a nearby object;

or the relevance of its location where you set it down.

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Create a system with another person

- a professional organizer,
a friend,
and/or family members,

people who can be objective and people who will be subjectively affected by the system.

Make it logical based on use rather than any neuronormative standards.

Label EVERYTHING under this system.

When returning objects to their correct room, prioritize the labeled area over any random placement.

If it's hard to "perfectly place it back," don't;

use labeled bins instead.

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Every time you leave a room, you take a thing that needs to move closer to its room.

Ideally choose something that will go in the room you are moving towards,

but even getting something closer is better than it not moving at all.

Make your task relevant:

Keep it at the forefront of your mind by using

echolalia,
word repetition,

to internally or externally chant or sing to yourself about your tasks.

Pick a single word to represent a task: "take out the garbage" becomes "garbage".

In the beginning, choose no more than 1-3 tasks to sing to yourself: I need to take out the garbage, and I want to brush my teeth, but I usually like to brush my teeth in the shower, but also I don't want to be gross after having just gotten cleaned:

Garbage
Shower
Teeth.

Garbage
Shower
Teeth.

Garbage
Shower
Teeth.

Shower
Teeth.

Shower
Teeth.

Teeth.

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Are these the only solutions? Are they solutions for everyone?

Of course not.

This is what I've found works for me as an AuDHDer:

The sorting scratches my autistic desire for organization as spiritual renewal and my ADHD drive for release from tension;

The echolalia satisfies my desire for creativity, and this method of using it also meets my need of satisfied completion.