5 Design Tips To Keep In Mind When Designing For A Kid (Or Adult) With ADD/ADHD…From A Designer/Licensed Marriage And Family Therapist

As any parent who has ever faced an ADHD or ADD diagnosis for their kids knows, the journey to get answers is fraught with worry followed by feelings of confusion about what to do next, even with that diagnosis in hand.

As a licensed Marriage and Family therapist of 20 years, I know all too well that as parents and children with ADHD begin weeding through diet, medicinal, and behavioral possibilities, post-diagnosis, so begins the deluge of well-intended but often overwhelming opinions that can be heaped upon us you by your peers or other parents. Those suggestions, meant to be helpful, can cloud the clarity you think you’re gaining as you learn more.

In my book, Home Therapy, I talk a lot about the ways our homes can support our healing paths, including for ADD and ADHD. As you can very well guess, our environment can be supportive or destabilizing to our journey. The truth I’ve learned is this: how we go out into the world begins with the tools we establish at home.

In my design projects, I absolutely love to put these tools into practice, as was the case with a family who hired me to make their home more supportive for a son struggling with ADHD. Specifically, this family brought me in to transform their 1988 home into a relevant and functional living space that would support every family member from the inside out. Our goal – as is the goal for every design project for me — was to put the mental health needs of the family in first position. Through this very intentional project, I was able to increase their calm and happiness throughout the home.

Here are the places I began that transformation:

COLOR

Color is by far the easiest and most impactful place to begin with ADD and the home environment. When we see color, our retina sends a message to our brain. That transmission triggers the release of certain hormones in our brains such as dopamine and serotonin. In each project that I’ve worked on with an ADD child, we begin with color. 

Here’s a fun fact: rooms for ADHD do not need to be all white. There is a notion that ADD or ADHD means you are over-stimulated. That’s false. Many ADHD individuals — kids and adults, alike — are actually being understimulated in a way that results in their symptoms. Using colors, especially in these situations, can be an appropriate way to increase healthy brain regulation. 

Blues, greens, and whites are the go-to when creating a sense of calm, but if we want to encourage productivity or increase energy, pops of reds, oranges, and yellows are where we turn. 

This room was designed for the son of my client who was struggling with his ADD. We wanted to land on a color that could meet him on two planes. He wanted a space to decompress at the end of the day but also encourage an increased amount of focus for reading or homework when the time called for it. Together, he and I landed on a blue that was both calming when he needed it and invigorating when his goal was to be productive.

ORGANIZATION

Organization is a great way to empower our kids to be in charge of the behavioral symptoms that often come along with this diagnosis — those symptoms being forgetfulness, lack of focus, and an inability to stay on task…among others. In the case of a loved one suffering with ADHD/ADD it’s difficult to watch them struggle with symptoms while simultaneously finding yourself frustrated at having to deal with the very same symptoms they are experiencing. In fact, I think I’ve heard every parent of an ADHD/ADD kid say at one point or another, “I get sick of asking them a thousand times to do something and them not doing it. It’s like they don’t even hear me,” — which by the way is a problem for every parent, but is definitely magnified for a parent of an ADHD kid. 

Diagnosed or not, organization is good for all our brains. Things like order, consistency, and schedules, not only help us be more productive, they make us feel safer. All of which is important, especially for children with either of these diagnoses. But, here’s something important to know, people have different styles of organization that speak most to their brain. Some of us are visual, others are listers, while some are more abstract. What feels like chaos to you and I, makes sense to them. 

When I’m designing organizational systems into a client’s home, I bring them into the process, especially if they have ADD or ADHD. Do the same with your kids. Start first with the intention of the room and organize to that goal. The reason being, what works for the cook in the kitchen might not work for your 13yr old who needs something very different for their space.

Also, expand your mindset around organization. Yes, it’s bins and baskets, but it’s also behavior. If we can solve or establish a behavior before the disorganization begins then we are remedying the symptom before it happens. What that looks like is this:  

In this client’s home, we turned a 1988 wet bar into a mudroom wall, complete with a drop zone cubby system. Each family member had their own cubby and we had lower baskets for shoes, bags, and purses. Hooks  — which I  love to ensure we are using all the vertical space —  went on the opposing wall, keeping jackets, scarves, and hats off the floor.

The bar top was also zoned to include a spot for keys and an intention tray, my solution to help give visual to your personal goals and dreams.

This entire space, built first to give their child with ADD a system to keep them on track, quickly became a solve for the whole family. 

TIME IN

There are three main ways that ADHD presents. Those three are: Inattentive, which is the difficulty to pay attention, Hyperactivity-Impulse, which leads to extreme struggles with sitting still or impulse regulation, or Combination, which is a blend of the two. What complicates all of this, is that there are other challenges that can look like ADHD or ADD but aren’t, like depression, anxiety, or sleep disorders. While all of that adds to the confusion of what your child may be facing, one thing is clear. For children wrestling with a range of these symptoms, there is a real struggle for them to feel in charge of or in tune with their mind/body connection.

As science shows us, the mind/body connection is increasingly-important, affecting focus, productivity, healing, and so much more. As a tool to solve this, I like to create TIME IN spaces, these are spots in our homes where your child can reset and be present.   

The payoff for TIME IN with kids is HUGE. 

In this TIME IN space, I created a nook under the stairs by DIY’ing a faux wall with foam board. I lined both sides with temp wallpaper but on the other side – facing into the dining room – I used the space to put in a wine rack.

This space is almost always small in scale to cocoon the child. It’s meant as a quiet space where they can sit and read or simply daydream, all to calm the mind and body.

On the wall we installed bins and filled them with intentional activities that research has shown, quiet the mind. These activities can be tailored to the child but often include a sensory focus such as aromatherapy and music to help the child connect their mind to their body, always adding in quiet games to increase focus and blankets or plushies to soothe. 

COMMUNAL

With ADD and ADHD, it can be easy to give more focus to behaviors that are less than ideal in our kids than it can be to speak about what is working. In other words, we risk no’s and criticisms becoming louder than kudos and compliments. I like to reverse engineer our thinking on parenting from correcting behavior to building it. 

I have three daughters hitting three different developmental stages — a 16-year-old, a younger teen at 14, and a 3rd grader. Our schedules are bananas! Yes, we have all sorts of scheduling apps that we can resort to, but somehow paper, clutter, and junk find their way onto every surface from the stair steps to the kitchen countertops. Like my clients, we too, were desperately in need of our own dropzone. To define ours, I traced out the most common path from where we enter the home through the garage into the kitchen and I saw how our stuff pile-up began the moment our kids hit the door. So, I followed the advice I give to my own clients. I created a FAMILY COMMAND CENTER. Like them, I chose the wall that we never paid much attention to and maximized it.

To start, we added hooks to utilize all the vertical space. Next – and I love this tip – I used paint to define and frame our wall workspace. It is SO effective because the color is the cue to pay attention, something that if you’re like me, you are always shouting at your kids to do. TBH, I lump my husband Travis into that, too. He has ADD and I’m on him as much as the kids to help keep the schedules and the space organized. This wall is my first line of defense.

By choosing an unused wall, you are building a home organizational system seemingly out of nothing and tailoring it to your needs!

Another great thing is to add a habit board to your wall. This is where we can build positive processes and patterns that become the habits that keep us on track. No habit is too small. Plus it allows us to celebrate our wins as a family. 

I devised my own habit tracker in my primary bathroom to help me get into the groove of exercising and meditating, during the pandemic when I literally lost all of my personal space, I created a small corner in my bathroom to lift weights, do yoga, and meditate. My habit tracker reminds me to keep up with my habits so that I don’t lose track of my previous routine. 

Between the colors or sticker systems, this entire wall becomes a visual cue for our goals. And for children with ADD or ADHD, it can help build focus and establish routines that lead to positive behaviors. Don’t shy away from customizing this space with family goals or memories, whatever it takes to make this a destination. 

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, set a weekly family meeting. This is where you all come together in the same communal space each week. I like the dining room. Phones go away and we check in with one another. As parents, arm yourself with a list of family goals, needs, and updates as well as plenty of questions to get those kids talking.

For my client teenager struggling with ADD and his family, we found that their dining room was the perfect neutral space to share feelings and frustrations as well as problem-solve. Finding a non-judgemental area in the home, where they could meet regularly, was the key to opening up positive communication for their family. When I was a full-time therapist, this was the main tool I helped families implement.

There is so much rich data that tells us that parents and kids talking like this leads to goodness in their mental health and ours. That might sound obvious, but with devices, activities, and a zillion other things vying for our attention – not to mention an already over or under-stimulated brain — and it’s too easy for hi and bye to be the extent of our daily exchange.

The number one thing to remember about our spaces and our struggles, be it ADD, ADHD, or something else, is that our homes are more than just a backdrop for our lives. They are a reflection of the habits and balance we are creating in ourselves. When we evoke the design of our surroundings to support us, our homes can actually lift us up and enrich our mental health.

*Designs by Anita Yokota
**Styling by Emily Bowser
***Photos by Sara Ligorria-Tramp (unless otherwise noted)