{"id":3806,"date":"2010-03-18T08:14:28","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T13:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=3806"},"modified":"2010-03-18T08:22:03","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T13:22:03","slug":"maternal-add","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/03\/18\/maternal-add\/","title":{"rendered":"Maternal ADD"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span>‘ve been trying to figure out if this is just one of those things you have to accept when you’re a mother of three boisterous little boys, or if it’s something I can control.<\/p>\n

Lately, I have noticed that I am perpetually unable to complete a single task uninterrupted. I open the browser window and start writing a blog post. I get three key-strokes in when the dog starts pacing around in that definitive “let me out now” kind of way. I let the dog out, and notice that the breakfast dishes are still on the table, so I start clearing them away. I begin loading the dishwasher, and Lucas demands a drink. I leave the dishwasher open and fill a sippy cup. Before I can hand him the sippy cup when the dog wants back in. I go to let the dog in, sippy cup still in hand, but the phone rings. While talking on the phone, I pick up the clothes strewn around and when the call ends, I go stuff a load of laundry into the washer. I can’t do that until I transfer the load that’s in the washer into the dryer, and can’t empty the dryer without a basket. I go upstairs and empty the basket of folded clothes onto my bed for later sorting, pausing along the way to remove Lucas from the toilet he’s about to plunge with a plastic hammer and on my way back to the laundry room Simon calls out from the kitchen because he’s banged his leg on the open dishwasher. At the same time, Tristan is hollering from upstairs that he doesn’t have any clean pants, and Lucas is still yammering for a drink.<\/p>\n

All. Day. Long.<\/p>\n

The worst part is, my work life is like this, too. Every time I sit down to do a particular task, there are five other things competing for my attention — an e-mail here, a phone call there, a colleague standing in my cubicle door with a question. I leave the office at the end of the day some days feeling like I pinged through the day like a pinball on crack, wildly bouncing from one thing to another at full speed without having actually accomplished anything.<\/p>\n

Now, I know there are some ways I can mitigate this at work. Only open and respond to e-mails during certain hours, set off blocks of time reserved for specific projects, and simply making myself unavailable at certain times. But how do you do that at home? Despite my exhortations, the two-year-old is not amenable to only standing on the kitchen table filching apples from the fruit bowl during the 10 – 11 am time period, and while the dog is genial at the best of times, she’s almost 11 years old and her bladder is not to be scheduled.<\/p>\n

I’m starting to get a little testy about the constant interruptions, and my ongoing inability to accomplish even the simplest tasks without a hundred distractions. Forget Chinese water torture — if you really want to drive someone insane, just make sure they’re not able to complete a single task, sentence or thought for three solid years.<\/p>\n

What say ye, bloggy peeps? Is it just me? Do I just give up and embrace the chaos, or is this a tiger I can tame?<\/p>\n

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go replace all the books that the toddler dumped from the bookcase in the time it took me to type this post, and to feed the children breakfast. Because it’s all about priorities, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I‘ve been trying to figure out if this is just one of those things you have to accept when you’re a mother of three boisterous little boys, or if it’s something I can control. Lately, I have noticed that I am perpetually unable to complete a single task uninterrupted. I open the browser window and … Continue reading “Maternal ADD”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3806"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3810,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3806\/revisions\/3810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}