Post by @adhddadcode

By 7pm I had nothing left. Bedtime with an ADHD dad is not a calm routine. It is a negotiation. A battle. A 30-minute process that somehow takes 2 hours. I was dysregulated. The kids were dysregulated. My wife was managing all of us. So she took over. Because my presence was adding chaos, not reducing it. 💾 Save this and share it with your wife. Here are the 3 rules that made bedtime something I could actually lead: Rule [1]: Start the wind-down 45 minutes before sleep, not at bedtime. The ADHD brain, in kids and adults, cannot jump from full stimulation to sleep. It needs a long runway. 45 minutes before target sleep time: screens off, lights dimmer, voices quieter, activities slower. The routine does not start at bedtime. The decompression starts 45 minutes before it. Skipping this buffer is why every ADHD bedtime becomes a battle. The kids are not being difficult. They are dysregulated because the transition was too fast for their nervous system. Rule [2]: The same 4 steps in the same order every single night. ADHD brains, children and parents alike, run better on fixed sequences than flexible ones. Our 4 steps are: wash, teeth, one book, lights out. Every night. Same order. No negotiation about what comes next because what comes next is not negotiable. When the sequence is fixed the arguments disappear. There is nothing to negotiate when the routine already has the answer. Rule [3]: Two minutes of full presence with each child before lights out. Before I leave the room I put the phone down, sit next to each child, and ask one question: what was the best part of today? Then I listen to the full answer before I speak. Two minutes. That is it. That question tells my child something the whole routine cannot: that the last thing I chose to do today was be fully there for them. It ends the night on connection instead of compliance. Follow @adhddadcode for real systems that make ADHD dads the ones who lead bedtime instead of making it harder. 🧠 🔁 Share this with the ADHD dad whose wife has been handling bedtime alone. 👇 What does bedtime look like in your house? Drop it below.