ADHD & the Midlife Sandwich
ADHD Life is Like Jenga
While many ADHD adults have found ways to thrive in our lives, there is a time when we will reach our limit. And there’s a reason why this limit tends to happen in mid-life.
I describe it using Jenga blocks. Remember the game of Jenga where you stack rectangular blocks to build a tower? Then each person takes a turn taking out a block and puts it on top until it crumbles. (Use Jenga Picture to help). The Jenga blocks represent our daily tasks and responsibilities, like eating, showering, work, maintaining relationships, etc. The systems and supports within our society are like the clear plastic cover that provides structure, making it easier to organize and re-stack the blocks if any fall down.
When there is a challenging or disrupting event that knocks a block or two off the tower (the loss of a job, or the death of a close parent, for example) most people fall back on those hidden supports to put their lives back together. Because most of us ADHD adults did not get adequate treatment and support growing up, we didn’t get an instruction manual or plastic cover for rebuilding the towers of our lives. Most of us have relied on our innovative brains and adapted creative ways to build and rebuild our towers, but the structures can be shaky and have blocks more easily knocked off. (See video for the visual)
It then becomes this amazing balancing act when everything aligns just right. It might provide just enough stability for a period of time - that is, until more blocks get added to the tower. This is why motherhood is so challenging, because it adds a lot of blocks all at once. As more disrupting life events happen, which is common in mid-life, the precariously structured and unsupported tower starts to crumble. This is why supported ADHD makes such a huge difference over the course of our lives.
ADHD and the Mid-life Sandwich
In 1981, Dorothy Miller and Elaine Brody coined the term, “the sandwich generation” to describe the generation of women who were “sandwiched” between caretaking their aging parents and their young children. While there has been an important shift in gender norms since 1981, where men are becoming the primary caregiver, the default caretaker for kids and ailing parents tends to be the mother.
Most of us find ourselves in the sandwich generation between the ages of 35 and 55. And as more of us have children later in life, it is becoming increasingly common to go from having active parents to ailing parent(s) while we are busy with the hard work of parenting our young children at the same time.
The way our brains work is to keep our own mortality at bay by not thinking about it. Most of us do not want to think of our parents dying or getting sick - nor ourselves. This often keeps us avoiding important conversations, planning for our end of life responsibilities, and encouraging our parents to do the same. Getting our estate in order is a lot of boring executive functioning tasks like filling out paperwork and making phone calls, without any reward that motivates the ADHD brain.
Unless you have experienced the aftermath of an unplanned estate, it is hard to get excited or motivated about planning for your death. While we can logically know that having a living trust and/or will is beneficial for those around us, especially our kids, it is a hard thing to prioritize - especially for ADHD. Estate planning is just as important for all the other things we do for our kids’ futures, like saving for college or signing them up for after school activities. Having things set up for someone to take care of your kids and your estate is protecting their futures in the worst case scenario.
Sometimes it is easier to think of it in simpler terms like wearing a seatbelt. Most of the time, we are not going to get into a car accident; but if we do, a seatbelt can make all the difference. End of life planning has a huge benefit when the unexpected happens, despite it being unlikely.
Executive Functioning Demands
Let’s define how the unique demands on the mid-life sandwich generation are amplified by ADHD’s executive functioning challenges. In the following chart, you will find things that normally occur around the mid-life sandwich stage and their corresponding executive functioning (EF) demands.
Guide:
⬆️EF = Increases executive function demands
❌ EF = Impairs executive functioning
✂️ SS = Disruption of supportive systems (SS) that ADHD adults rely on to mitigate the impact of executive functioning challenges
No wonder that so many adults (especially women) get diagnosed in mid-life when the executive functioning demands are high and perimenopause kicks in to make it even more challenging. You can see in the chart that the executive functioning demands increase across the board - from the needs of our children, to increased responsibilities at work, home, and financially. When health issues start to arise in these sandwich generation years, not only are we at the peak of executive function responsibilities, we are tasked with navigating the most challenging systems while sick, anxious, or in grief.
All of these events are on top of the parenting challenges that come with being a mother the previous blog discussed. Moms are the designated emotional bedrock for the family, the leader in the mental load, and responsible for maintaining everyone’s relationship. And we are doing all of this while finally getting the ADHD support that we never got as kids. Most likely our kid(s) will have ADHD, which adds to the executive functioning load. ADHD kids are more impacted when their supports and routines are disrupted, often having more intense emotional meltdowns. It is an impossible situation to balance everyone’s conflicting high needs that happen in this stage. The ADHD caretaking sandwich tends to be bigger on each end (as the ailing parent is likely to have ADHD as well).
Part 2 coming soon! Join me for a FREE webinar on February 23rd at 12 pm CDT on this topic. Free resources for ADHD & Midlife are in my ADHD Resource section.