I'm new here and hoping for some insight. My husband I have been married for almost 13 years and have 3 kids (9, 6 and almost 3). He has ADHD. I'm guessing he's had it a loooong time but was able to cope until life got busier with multiple kids and the stress of work. He went on medication (Adderal) a few months ago. We've seen a big change in his focus for sure. He's very bright and has always thrived at work. He's always held down a steady job and our finances are good because I'm in charge of them-if he's in charge, we have issue (overspending, forgetting to pay bills). I'm a total type A personality and uber organized so I do the bills and we go over them together once a month.
Really, the main issue we've had is with our schedules. We both work full time. My job is a bit of an odd job as I work 24 hour call from home 7-8 times a month. My job is very high stress and during the times I'm on call, I'm pretty much working 20 hours of the 24. My husband works at a high school and technically gets off at 2:30 pm and normally is home by 3:30-4:00 pm as he never leaves work on time (I'm assuming this is part of the ADHD as he just can't shut off or stick to a schedule). We've talked multiple times about how on my call days, I need him home by 3:30. I drop the two oldest off at school and the youngest one at my moms and then work from home until 2pm when I do school pickup and pickup the 3 year old. By the time I'm home, it's 3ish and then its the mad rush of homework, baseball practice, dance, art, and balancing call with my phone and pager going off non stop. My husband has a REALLY hard time committing to being home on time and it's driving me insane. Last week, I was on call Tuesday. It was also my first day on call in a new dept so I was super nervous. He woke me up at 5am to tell me he totally forgot about a meeting at work and just realized he wouldn't be home until 5pm not 3:30 like I had asked him. He kept telling me to just "figure out" what to do with the kids until I totally lost it and became a raging luanatic screaming at him.... My parents were watching my youngest but had plans that afternoon so they dropped him off at 3:30 pm and I had to struggle through admitting patients, patient calls and talking to my surgeon I take call for with 3 kids in the background running wild. It was horrible.
We had a long talk after that and he promised to put all my call days in his phone and said he would make sure to not schedule any late meetings. We're also in the process of selling our house and buying a new one and have multiple meetings set up with our realtor, lender and contractor. We went over both our schedules and I emailed him my May schedule so this wouldn't happen again and he said he put it in his phone. Today, we have dinner plans for our brother in laws bday. I was talking to him on his lunch break today and said maybe we could run some errands before. He had completely forgot about dinner and scheduled a meeting (that he had not told me about nor put on the calendar) and will be home at 5pm. When I got frustrated, he said the schedule shouldn't matter unless I'm on call and I'm not... he doesn't seem to get that it's just common courtesy to tell someone if you're going to be home late. I got frustrated and said I would like for us to meet together with his therapist (the one that diagnosed him-he sees her once a month and we go together at times as well) to get some tools for how to work our schedule out together and to help him see how important this is to me. He got frustrated and said "I'm taking the meds. That should be enough." He agreed to set up an appt and said he would set it up for a week from Monday. I said, "No, I work that day. I'm on call." and he said "No, you aren't. I'm looking at my calendar." So we went back over the email I sent him and he only entered in 4 of the 6 call days I sent. He totally skipped over 2 of them. He said it was a complete accident and I'm sure it was but how can I trust him to be home on time if he can't even take the info I email him an put it in his calendar?!
HELP! He says it's my fault for being "too organized" and wanting a perfect schedule. I say that we need to work together with 2 full time working parents and 3 small kids. How do I get him to see this? What tools can we use to sync our schedules without him feeling like I'm asking for too much? Am I asking for too much? Is this too much to expect?
