Claire's personality is that she LIKES structure! So I knew that it would be best to put everything onto a calendar, so that she could check off her list and feel GOOD every time she accomplished a task.
Since her writing is scratchy and relatively illegible (also typical of Asperger’s and ADHD), the free electronic calendar provided by Google works perfectly for us. We can both view and add to it whenever we wish, yet it is also completely private from anyone else.
So here are the things we placed on her calendar from the very beginning. Here is our holistic plan for her overall health . . .
EXERCISE – begin training for a 10K Fun Run:
We are fortunate to live in a community where there “just happens” to be a BIG 10K “Fun Run” each year. This Fun Run also “just happens” to be nine weeks away from the date when Claire first moved in to my home. Nine weeks is about perfect for a training that can take an individual from couch potato to 10K without too much effort so I searched for one that I could tweak and placed it on her calendar.
Now, I know that Claire is by no means a “couch potato!” Yet I also know that she doesn’t like to “push herself” very hard UNLESS it’s something SHE likes to do! (Well she IS a teenager, isn’t she?)
Even when [or maybe especially because] she is a teen who is very PASSIVE about expressing dislike for something, she tends to deny or avoid it vs. show outward conflict about it, trying to have her way by simply hoping that no one will notice!
This is why I thought it best to make the exercise easy so that she would begin to feel the results before she would feel the boredom, and decided that it ALSO wouldn’t be a bad thing to make exercise the FIRST to-do therapy on her calendar!
So every day Claire begins with her 10K training, and her one day off each week is reserved for Sundays. I must say that I have been amazed at how well she does with the consistency of this in her schedule.
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