Your Inner Adult is Telling You to Brush Those Teeth

For years, we’ve been told to get in touch with our inner child. Maybe to bolster our creativity. Maybe to boost our ability to have fun, or maybe even bond with our child(ren).

It’s less fun to think about our inner adult, but we need that adult in our lives, especially those of us with ADHD. We know it’s an issue of executive functioning, and that executive functioning keeps us brushing our teeth, which is effective in avoiding dental health issues and high dentistry costs… that’s just one thing we as adults need to do in our daily lives.

Back when we were kids, our parents would annoyingly remind us to do things like our homework, our chores and even brushing our teeth.

Now that we’re adults, it’s up to us to channel that inner adult to get things like oral hygiene accomplished. I found it’s best to create a strategy at home for people with ADHD, to manage this. For me, it’s a pre-bedtime ritual. For others, it can be the ‘practice what you preach’ model. Because what kind of parent would tell their kid to brush their teeth and not brush their own?

What people with ADHD struggle with the most, is often creating the daily ritual, the one our parents made us stick to, which helped us accomplish the most basic stuff.

The other thing that gets in the way of us sticking to the routine, is that impulse control issue. We are on our way to the bathroom to brush our teeth, when we get a notification on our phone. We stop and look at the phone. Respond and then think about something new to do, and forget about brushing our teeth. There is a difference between ADHD and an impulse control disorder. That difference is (those of us with ADHD) when we get distracted by our phone, we might go into a deep rabbit hole on Wikipedia or get into an argument with a social media friend. As opposed to impulse control disorders which are more extreme by nature, such as shoplifting or even violent behaviors.

But with typical ADHD, we get led somewhere else and then forget what we were supposed to do.
Remember, this blog started out about brushing your teeth?

So, create a plan. What is it you need to do and how can you make that a part of your daily life? What time will you do that? Will setting a reminder on your phone help? Will having a friend, spouse or family member remind you, be a good thing? Would putting a sticky note with a written reminder help? Maybe saying it out loud? Maybe all of this? Maybe something I didn’t mention?
When it comes to forming a habit, many a book has been written, but certain things work for certain people. Feel free to throw the proverbial kitchen sink at this, but I usually brush my teeth over the bathroom sink.