There’s a popular saying that declares it takes 21 days to form a habit.
It’s a lovely idea — if you force yourself through the morning exercise routine or the evening house-tidying 21 little times, it will become so natural that you won’t even hate it anymore! Unfortunately, it has virtually no basis in science, and for kids who are autistic or have ADHD, habit-forming is even harder.
The good news is that these kids (and their adult counterparts) can still form good habits with a little extra effort and support.
Executive Functioning, Dopamine Deficiency, & Habit-Forming
Habit-forming is much more complicated than merely repeating a task enough times to build muscle memory. Dopamine plays a significant role, and unfortunately, brains with autism or ADHD don’t always stimulate dopamine production in the ways that neurotypical brains do.
Brains are pleasure-seeking, and dopamine is a tool our bodies use to make necessary tasks pleasurable to our brains. Brushing your teeth feels good because when you do it, your brain makes an association with the clean sensation and releases a little dopamine. Eating junk food feels good because your brain releases a rush of dopamine in response to all that sugar, fat, and salt. Playing your favorite mobile game feels good because it is designed to give tiny, frequent rewards that result in a steady flow of tiny doses of dopamine, and this applies whether the game (or app) in question is Candy Crush, the New York Times Crosswords, or Duolingo.
So, How Do We Ever Form Habits That Aren’t Fun?
We can still get dopamine blasts from tasks that aren’t fun, like washing the dishes or going for a run, but they may be tied more to a sense of accomplishment, completion, or mini-goals along the way, and we may have to develop that more deliberately.
But like external rewards, our internal reward system works best if the rewards are happening throughout the activity rather than at the end or later, which is why we’re happier playing a mobile game than cleaning a room, even if there’s a promise of a great treat (like a clean room) at the end of that task.
Scientific American reported on one experiment in which would-be gymgoers were offered an incentive: during gym sessions, they’d have access to new, popular audiobooks. Sure enough, the participants who were rewarded this way during their exercise were more likely to show up!
How Does Neurodivergence Factor In?
If forming habits is a bit more complicated for the average person than popular self-help advice would have us believe, it’s much more so for someone whose dopamine production is dysregulated.
As a bonus, our productivity-obsessed society piles on a load of shame for failing to be productive and active, making it even harder. When someone starts to believe that their messy room, unbrushed hair, or incomplete math assignments devalue them as a person, instead of motivating them, it can tend to cause pretty deep depression and a loss of executive function. (Executive function is the series of processes in the brain that allow us to turn a thought into a completed task, and when it doesn’t work, a person may struggle even to start activities they love and want to do!)
What Can Parents Do?
The good news is that as long as we can stay positive, we can help our kids overcome. I know I’ve shared this with my readers before, but my favorite parenting quote from Glennon Doyle applies here as it so often does:
“Don’t let yourself become so concerned with raising a good kid that you forget you already have one.”
Our first step is to stop the shaming.
We have to lose the “Aren’t you ashamed for your friends to see how knotty your hair is?” and the “If you don’t shower, the other kids won’t want to sit next to your stink” and the “If my room looked like this I wouldn’t want anyone to know it.”
We need to replace those with uplifting and supportive encouragement.
Maybe we say, “I know brushing your hair feels yucky, but I bet just 20 strokes of the brush would make a visible difference!” Or we say, “Showering may feel like it interrupts your day, but it’s important for your health, and it won’t take but 15 minutes.” Or we say, “Your room is your personal space, but I am going to require you to keep it neat enough for safety,” and then we set specific limits on trip hazards and dirty dishes.
Therapist Danielle Wayne says that people whose ADHD or other struggles result in a shame cycle need to learn to speak to themselves more kindly first. For our kids, we can set the example by using our own words kindly (both to the kids and ourselves).
Help Kids Reframe Tasks For Dopamine Maximization
Be open with your kid about this. This is a strategy they will take into adulthood. Explain to them that the trick is to fool our brains into giving that necessary dopamine boost as we carry out the least-pleasant tasks.
One way to do this is to pair the unpleasant task with a more rewarding one.
To continue our examples above, you might give your child extra screen time during hair brushing, or purchase a waterproof speaker for listening to music or podcasts in the shower. Maybe you join your child to help clean their room, and they’re allowed to tell you every last thought they have about Minecraft and Roblox, as long as they’re actively cleaning while they talk. (Infodumping can be both a love language and a major dopamine producer!)
Another trick for maximizing dopamine is gamification.
You can gamify a task in many ways, from racing the clock to see if you can get all the dishes done before your playlist ends, to telling yourself a story about the toys you’re putting away. Numeric goals are gamification, so your child might be willing to fold and put away one dress, two pairs of pants, three t-shirts, and four socks.
Some apps help gamify chores and self-care. Finch, for example, rewards a user with points they can use to decorate their bird’s nest or buy it new costumes.
Other Small Tricks To Sidestep Dopamine Dysregulation
Timers are an excellent tool because it is a lot easier to find motivation to do a task for five minutes than to do the task for an open-ended period (even if you know the task will only take five minutes).
Visual cues help, so consider a laundry hamper by the door, toothpaste on a visible shelf instead of inside a cabinet, and the dog’s leash near the door to make it harder to forget those tasks.
Comfort can be key, so consider what parts of the tasks are uncomfortable. Does your child hate dishes because of how the soapy water feels on their hands? Are showers awful because of the cold sensation after turning the water off? Is litterbox cleaning miserable because it’s in such an awkward corner? All of these things are possible to address — gloves or a scrub brush with a long handle, a heater in the bathroom, and relocating a litter box are way easier than a daily argument.
Sometimes, just discussing what part of the task stalls your child can help — for instance, maybe they don’t mind taking their turn cleaning up after dinner, except that they hate scraping plates. Find a way to sidestep this. That might mean that they use a paper towel or plastic grocery bag or even a wooden spatula instead of a metal fork to scrape plates, or it might mean that they swap that part of the task for a different task their sibling can’t bear.
Important Things To Remember
The most important thing to remember is that if your child has ADHD or autism, none of these tips will change that. You cannot make your neurodivergent kid into a neurotypical kid, but you can give your kid tools to make tasks less of a struggle.
If you’re expecting miracles, you are setting your child up for failure. It’s hypothetically possible that once you agree that dishes can be done with headphones on, your kid never argues about it again — but it’s not likely.
Your child will still experience both struggles and triumphs. Your job is to support and love him through both.