Ceasefire Tactics: Using Brain Science to End the Chore Wars in ADHD Relationships

Sick of the constant skirmishes over household chores in your ADHD relationship?

I feel you! It’s exhausting! The never-ending resentment, score-keeping, snide remarks, and withheld comments make you want to run back to bed, pull the covers over your head, and wait for Mary Poppins to sweep in and wave her magic umbrella!

But ADHD brains in relationships– especially when paired with neurotypical partners– are particularly built for this exact kind of conflict. This makes ADHD relationships feel like they are constantly on the battleground of the Chore Wars, leaving both partners feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, and stuck in a cycle of feeling unappreciated and unseen.

In this excerpt from the Webinar, Loving ADHD, hosted in a joint collaboration between Rittenhouse Psychological Services and ADDept.org, we explore the unique brain differences that underlie this difficult dynamic.

But fear not, because this video isn't just about identifying the quirks that fuel those conflicts; it's about discovering ingenious solutions that will have you dancing around the house with joy!

Get ready to explore how the beautiful differences between ADHD and non-ADHD brains can actually become superpowers in setting up systems that not only reduce conflict but also celebrate each other's unique strengths.

So grab your popcorn, settle into your comfiest spot, and prepare to be entertained, enlightened, and inspired by this fantastic video on how to end the chore wars in our ADHD relationships. Let's embark on this adventure together!

And then. Once that oh-so-much-more-than-pesky issue of Chore Wars has been tackled, sign up, and I’ll send you the full webinar where we tackle the 2 other biggest issues in ADHD relationships: big emotions and feeling unseen and unheard.

Not a video watcher? I’ve got ya! There’s a full transcript below 😀

0:00
I do want to just say for those of you who are parents or grandparents of folks with ADHD, these dynamics, while we're talking about intimate relationships, specifically, really, these dynamics exist in any kind of relationship, right. And so you're gonna see a lot of parallels in both the issues and kind of the solutions, that, hopefully you can apply to those relationships as well.
So ADHD relationship number one issue: chore wars. And I probably don't need to paint the scene for you guys. Because there are very few ADHD households that aren't familiar with some version of this, but we're gonna paint it anyways. Because step one is always to kind of figure out what's at play here, what, what's the situation and really kind of define it as clearly as possible.
So, in most ADHD relationships, and again, it doesn't really matter whether there are two ADHD or is or just one. But in most ADHD relationships, there tends to be a quote-unquote, “over-functioner”, and a quote-unquote “under functioner”. And typically, if it is an ADHD and neurotypical relationship, the neurotypical person tends to fall in the over functioner category, and ADHD, brain tends to fall in the under functioner category. But again, that doesn't necessarily have to be sometimes those roles can flip.
So the over-functioner tends to be kind of the busy bee, right? And they tend to take on a whole lot of the tasks; they often feel like things need to be done in a particular way, and they have a lot of feelings about how things should be done. And oftentimes, the over-functioner becomes an over-functioner because, for whatever reason, the tasks of the household, the tasks of the couple, may be easier, for whatever reason that is, and or just kind of line up more with their motivations, their desires, their abilities. And so they tend to take on more of these tasks. And they tend to feel like they have to do it. All this ends up leaving them pretty resentful and angry, it often make them feel unappreciated and dissatisfied.
But you know what? on the flip side of that coin, the under-functioner also ends up resentful and angry and feeling unappreciated and feeling dissatisfied because the under-functioner, the one who is, you know, doing least or at least kind of that's, that's their role. They often end up feeling like they have less say in how things run and feel really guilty and shamed. They feel like they can't do it right. Oftentimes, the over-functioner has a lot of feelings about how things need to be done. And so the under functioner kind of, it's like, well, I can't even do it right anyways, so why bother? And oftentimes, the under-functioner becomes the under-functioner, or because, for whatever reason, those tasks might be harder, right? And if we're talking about a typical neurotypical/ ADHD relationship, oftentimes those tasks are harder because a lot of chores don't line up all that well for ADHD brains.
And we're going to talk a little bit about why in a moment.
3:46
So we have somebody kind of doing a whole lot, and somebody's doing less and a whole lot of resentment, and bitterness and anger between them going both ways.
So what are the brain differences at play here?
If you have a neurotypical, an ADHD brain, we have a couple different differences in terms of how these brains work that play into this issue.
So the first issue and honestly, there are more than two for chore wars. We're gonna name the two really big ones that play. But there are actually more differences at play here. But these are the kind of the two biggest ones that we really need to be addressed.
So the first brain difference that comes up for Chore Wars is motivation.
So any brain doesn't matter what nerd type you are. Anything any brain needs to have enough motivation to get moving on something, right? We have to feel enough kind of oomph to get started. On any given task, different brains are motivated differently. So ADHD brains are motivated by five things, they tend to be motivated by novelty, things that are shiny and new, are very compelling. Pressure– so interpersonal or time pressure really gets an ADHD brain moving, right? This is where procrastination comes from. If you wait long enough, the pressure will be build up, and we'll get the move in on something, right? Competition. So, you know, throwing a little healthy competition in things kind of gets things interesting and gets some blood flowing. Interest creates a whole lot of draw for an ADHD brain. And this is kind of the classic. You know, a lot of parents will say, like, yeah, my kid, you know, can't pay attention to his homework at all, but he can, you know, play video games for hours on end and, you know, be totally hyper-focused, right? Because that interest is there. And then humor, is kind of a newer one that there's been more talk about recently. And, you know, I think humor works really, really well for a lot of people doesn't work for everyone. But for those of you with a funny bone, you may have experienced this kind of like draw towards the funny and and a draw to kind of create humor in things to create a little bit more activation.
6:37
So, what are the motivating factors for neurotypical brains? Rewards and consequences and importance. So things that are important motivate the neurotypical brain.
Now, you will notice that there is no overlap here, right? There is no overlap between the things that motivate neurotypical brains and the things that motivate ADHD brains.
And so we have the scenario where we have ADHD brains kind of being pulled and drawn by one thing, and neurotypical brains being pulled and drawn by something else. And neurotypical brains are being pulled by things that are honestly our society is kind of built to reward, and built; it has built-in a system that works for neurotypical brains and the way that they are motivated. So really important things, things that are rewarded, punishments that we're avoiding– neurotypical brains, that works for them. That doesn't work for ADHD brains.
The other thing that you'll notice here, is that chores, right? Um, you know, doing the dishes, folding the laundry, none of those things have really any novelty, right? We've all done those before. There's not that much pressure. There's no competition; there's definitely no interest. And there really is no humor in dishes. And so all the chores stuff, it may be super important. There may even be rewards on the other end of it or consequences for not doing it. So that works for an neurotypical brain. But for an ADHD brain is not going to work that well. And, and so that inherent motivation, isn't there for ADHD brains in the way that it is there for a neurotypical brain.
And so we see this a lot in couples where, you know, the neurotypical person will say, Yeah, but it's really important that this gets done, right? It's really important that the kids, you know, permission slips get signed. Great. That'll work for a neurotypical brain. But for an ADHD, brain importance doesn't register. And there's nothing novel, interesting, competitive, humorous, or pressured about signing permission slips, right? So this is part of the issue at play with the chore wars.
9:43
But I said there were two brain differences here. And that's because even a super-motivated brain isn't going to do something that is not thinking about right it has to be aware of the thing that it needs to do. In order for that motivation to do anything, here we have another brain difference, and this is object permanence. So object permanence is the basic understanding of object permanence that comes from developmental psychology.
And is this basic principle that starts to evolve early in kind of toddlerhood. And so if if you have any babies or young kids in your life, you know that a baby, you know, or a kind of an older baby, right, like a nine-month-old, thinks peekaboo is the greatest thing in the world thinks that is the most fun thing ever. But if you tried playing peekaboo with a nine year old, they would look at you like you were crazy, right?
Because a nine-year-old, when you hide behind your hands and then pop out, the nine-year-old totally gets that you're still there. And the nine-year-old is just like, what are you doing? On a nine-month-old, however, when you hide behind your hands, you disappear; you're no longer present.
And so this basic principle is at play here. Now, I want to be clear that though a neurotypical brain has this, this, this ability for object permanence, and I want to be clear that it is she brings, they it's not like they, they're gonna find peekaboo fun, right? Like, it's not like they have no object permanence. They totally do.
But what happens with ADHD brains is what I like to call kind of a fishbowl brain. So imagine that you're walking around in the world, and you've got a fishbowl on, you know, your heads inside this fishbowl. So it's sitting on your shoulders, and you're walking around; everything inside the fishbowl is super prominent.
Your brain is very, very aware of all the things inside the fishbowl. Everything outside the fishbowl does not exist. The only things that exist are inside that fishbowl. And and honestly, this is part of the reason why ADHD brains often feel really anxious, right, because they try to shove lots of things in this fish fishbowl so they don't disappear. Because the minute something is plucked out of that fishbowl, it disappears from awareness, it's no longer present, and it doesn't hold on to it in the same way that a neurotypicalbrain would.
12:36
So this becomes kind of a recipe for undone tasks, right? Both of these things really play in that, that you can be super aware that a task needs to be done but have no motivation to do it, and the task won't get done. Or you could have some motivation and some oomph behind you. But if you're not aware that it needs to be done, if it's not present, then you're also not going to do it. And, you know, doubly so if you have, you don't have the motivation, and the task isn't present for you and in part in your awareness.
13:15
So what do we do, we have these two brains. One is kind of set up for chores success, shall we say? And the other one is set up for not doing chores. And yet, you know, we all need to be sharing the chores, right? So, I, one of the ways to think about how to make this work kind of. And so let me back up for a moment.
So I often like to think about ADHD brains as being a lot like water. And so water on its own is kind of a puddle, right, like, if we just pour a whole bunch of water somewhere, it's just gonna be a puddle, it's not going to move all that much. And it's just kind of gonna sit there. But if you put some structure in, right, if you put some walls in that water, kind of like a riverbank, and you give it a little tilt, with some motivation. Right now that river has a lot of power. Rivers can power whole cities, right? There is a lot of movement, and rivers can really create a whole lot of change. And this is really kind of what we want to do for ADHD brains. We want to be really mindful of motivation. And we also want to be really mindful of creating external structures that make that movement kind of flow in the right direction.
14:51
So that's what we want to think about when we're thinking about strategies for chore wars, or really any Give us other strategies; we want to be thinking about ADHD-friendly strategies, right? So we want to pair any strategy with structure and motivation.
15:10
So how do we do that?
So good ADHD-friendly structure is basically three things: it’s external, it's actionable, and it's iterative.
So, by external, what I mean is that we're going to look for systems that don't rely on our brains. And this is a classic one, right? How many times have you said, Are you heard? How many times have I heard : “I just need to do x better?” Right? I just need to remember to do Y., Right? That I just need to make my brain work differently is basically what we're saying when we say that we're not going to have our brains work differently.
And honestly, we don't, we don't want your brains to work differently. As we said, at the very beginning, there's some awesome things about ADHD brains. And so instead, we want to bring in external structures that create that momentum.
So here are some examples of some external systems for chores. And these are just examples to get kind of you rolling. But really, the idea is that we want them to exist outside of your brain. And honestly, it helps with lots of things; it helps to actually, you know, bring things into awareness; it also helps with the relationship, right, because now the thing outside is the one telling us what to do, right? The chore chart, or the chore app, or the calendar alerts, these are the things that are telling us what to do rather than that over function or being like you didn't do X or Y, you need to go do Y. And so when it exists outside of the people in the relationship, it tends to take some of that tension kind of away.
17:15
So chore charts, I know, chores originated for kids. But guess what, they're super useful for adults too. And so no, no shame in the game in putting chore charts to work for adult relationships. And they really, they exist outside of us. They provide that structure, that awareness, that cue. And calendar alerts also kind of provide a little extra oomph a little extra awareness. The other thing to think about is chore apps. And so I put in here to have on the Habitica and Pepto; they both have like a gamification aspect to it. And that can be super useful in terms of kind of like bringing in some of that motivation as well. nepto in particular, has the ability to have more than one person on it. And so that can be really useful in relationships.
18:34
So here's an example of an external structure. Instead of saying something like, you just have to start remembering to take the trash out, right, which is pretty shaming, first of all, isn't in pretty critical. And let isn't actually likely to have the effect that we wanted to have isn't, is probably going to create tension. Rather than actually getting the person to take the trash out.
Something that might be more successful would be let's let's set a reoccurring alarm on Wednesday night to take the trash out. So not only is this kind of a more approachable way of framing it right it's a it's a we framing, but it is also an external structure. That is not about just making your brain do something different than it's naturally made to do.
19:41
Okay, so we talked about external, and now we're gonna talk about actionable. So how do we make things actionable? Things that are actionable, have a what a win and a prompt, right? So exactly what are we going to do? Right, we're going to take the trash out, we're going to do the dishes, we're and by doing the dishes remain, we are going to wash all of the dishes, put them all in the dishwasher, turn the dishwasher on and clean the sink out, right? Really defining the whole task. What, what is this action that we're taking? When are we going to do it? Ideally, that's connected to something that we're already doing a habit stack. So we will do those dishes right after we have dinner, or we will do those dishes before we go to bed. Or we will do those dishes first thing in the morning, whatever it is, there's a when, and then there's a prompt, what's going to bring it into awareness, right? What's going to cue our brains, this is the thing that we we said we were going to do right now.
20:57
And then finally, good- ADHD systems are iterative, which means that we keep coming back to it, because any system is going to break down. And this is true in any personhood; any relationship is extra true and ADHD systems. And so we need to accept that they're going to break down. And that doesn't mean the system's bad or the people are bad. It's just how it works.
And then we need to be adaptive. And we need to evolve, right? Because things are going to happen. Right? So let's say you set a phone alarm to take the trash out on Wednesday night. Great. That worked for a while until your son's soccer practice happened to come up at the same time that your alarm was going off right now, I'm at soccer practice. I'm not there to take the trash out. I snooze, I turn off the alarm. And when I get home, it's no longer in my fishbowl. I'm no longer aware of it. So we're going to need to addept, we're going to need to evolve that. And this is really where weekly check-ins and kind of systems reviews are super useful. Because it's this scheduled time where we say okay, this is what we're doing. We are going to look at the systems we're gonna see what's working; anything needs to be shifted, has anything fallen off? What do we need to evolve kind of and be flexible with what do we need to to have addept so that it can keep on rolling?