I sit down and want to weep when I look at the detailed lists of questions I need to fill out: In what areas has your student made unsatisfactory progress this year? In what areas is his/her classroom performance inadequate?

I scour my memory bank for answers and come up blank. I guess I hadn’t only been distracted by other demands on my time; there was an element of procrastination here. Coming up with the answers to these questions is challenging, and my default response to challenges is to put the task on the back burner.

The solution? Bribery. The only time I make exceptions to my healthy eating rule is when I have to motivate myself to do something I don’t want to do. I buy myself a chocolate bar from the vending machine in the faculty lounge and tell myself I can eat it when I’m done.

And I pull out earphones so I can listen to music while I’m doing it. It makes the experience of doing something challenging so much sweeter. Along the same lines, I also listen to fast, happy music while I do housework. There’s nothing like the beat of Gad Elbaz’s “Hashem melech, Hashem malach” to get me moving. Right now, I go for something slower and soothing, and when I finish, I’m grinning. This has been on my head for weeks! Generally, I’m a good employee. I love my students like I love my own children, and I invest creative effort into making my lessons fun and interactive. When I taught Jewish history and we learned about the Spanish Inquisition, I shut the blinds, turned out the lights, and as a class, we enacted a Shabbos meal held in secret, complete with “soldiers” barging in on us with shouts and screams and fake swords.

Probably because of my challenge with organization, I’ve developed the ability to take huge chunks of information and break them down into smaller, simpler bites, so I’m very good at explaining complex concepts to my students. And my tendency toward drama means I teach in my storytelling voice, which has the kids riveted.

My downfall is the organizational aspects: paperwork, coming on time, remembering meetings. I’ve had more than one embarrassing episode where the school secretary called me and I heard the dreaded words, “Mrs. Bloomberg, the Millers are already here for the meeting. Are you on your way in?”

And I’d choke on the coffee I’d been leisurely sipping in my kitchen and gasp, “Oh, no, I’m so sorry, I completely forgot!”

Luckily, the other staff members are very tolerant of my flaws, which isn’t something I take for granted. I live in perpetual fear that the principal or secretary will one day retire and be replaced with people who aren’t as forgiving.

I used to be an even bigger asset to the school. In my pre-diagnosis days, I was also in charge of the school play and the shabbatons. In typical ADHD fashion, I would become almost obsessive in my enthusiasm for those projects and devote myself entirely to them, stretching myself so thin I had little time, energy, and motivation left for my family.

Doing something a bit obsessively is a common ADHD trap. When I’m inspired or excited about something, it’s hard for me to snap out of focusing on what’s sparked my interest to move on to something more mundane and boring. And everything about planning the menu and activities for a shabbaton, or directing a school play — from designing costumes and scenery to writing the script to tryouts and rehearsals, and let’s face it, the accolades and flowers I receive after a spectacular performance — is so much more interesting than clearing the table after supper or treating stains on a shirt.

It’s also a very ADHD trait to have difficulty judging how long things take and how much you can realistically accomplish, leading you to take on many more responsibilities than you can handle. Case in point: When we came back from Israel and moved to an out-of-own community, I noticed there was no meal train system for new mothers. Naturally, I rushed to fill the void.

But there were more women who needed the help than women who could offer it. I was left to fill in the gaps and make supper whenever there were empty slots on the communal spreadsheet. Getting my act together to make supper for my family on a regular basis was hard enough; doing it for another family as well, two or three times a week, and then going out to deliver it was a colossal challenge. I did it, though, and did it gourmet: vegetable soup, London broil, roast potatoes, salad, garlic string beans, cut-up fruit for dessert — nothing motivating like knowing there’s another family counting on you. But it meant that on nights I didn’t need to make a meal for someone else, my family gulped air for dinner.

One evening my husband came home and announced that our neighbors the Freemans had a baby. “Mazel tov,” I said. “Great news.”

“Great news,” my husband agreed. “Now our family will get a good supper.”

Ouch!

Now, with my diagnosis and learning more about ADHD tendencies, I realized just how right my husband was. I couldn’t look after my family and run the meal train system and teach and be in charge of the school play and shabbatons. I needed to cut back, and once I’d cut back, to cut back some more so I could actually get done what I needed to do.

So I did. And haven’t looked back.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 918)