Why Letting Go of ‘Perfect’ Saved Our Family (and Our Sanity)

When ADHD Parenting Becomes an Act of Faith Reconstruction

My 20-year-old son laughed as he recounted a memory from years past. "I remember when you used to make us clean up and you'd gather everything from the floor into a pile and sort it out into smaller piles and put it away," he said, grinning. "But we don't have to do that anymore because there isn't stuff all over the floor. It was all over the carpet. Stuff everywhere!"

He was right. Those chaotic cleanup sessions are a distant memory now. Part of it is natural evolution—no more toddlers means fewer toys scattered like landmines across every surface. But the bigger shift happened when I stopped trying to parent "the right way" and started creating systems that actually worked for our neurodivergent brains.

It took me years to realize that my approach to home management was deeply entangled with my religious conditioning. The Mormon church had taught me that righteousness looked like perfection, that good mothers created pristine environments through sheer willpower and moral superiority. When I inevitably failed to maintain magazine-worthy cleanliness with six ADHD brains in the house, I didn't see it as a systems problem. I saw it as evidence of my spiritual inadequacy.

The Perfectionist Trap

My first years as an ADHD coach, I worked mostly with kids and teens. Not because that's what I was advertising, but because parents were far more likely to get help for their children than themselves. They saw their kids' ADHD struggles as loud, urgent problems that consumed their time and energy. But when it came to their own executive function challenges? That was just being "a hot mess" or "failing at life."

Adults would bring me their children, believing the kids could be fixed—that new tools and behaviors would solve everything. They'd tried enough calendars and planners to know that approach didn't work for them personally, but surely their children were young enough, not completely broken yet. They wanted better for their kids than what they'd had.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Here I was, teaching families to create ADHD-friendly environments while my own home operated in constant chaos. I'd internalized the same perfectionist standards I was helping my clients dismantle. In true Mormon fashion, I believed my worth was tied to my ability to maintain an impossibly high standard through discipline and righteous effort.

But coaching taught me something revolutionary: I wasn't there to solve problems or peddle solutions. Each unique brain needs unique accommodations. Yet I also learned specific techniques that create neurodivergent-friendly environments—techniques I'd been sharing with clients while ignoring in my own life.

The Faith Crisis That Changed Everything

Leaving the Mormon church didn't just transform my spiritual life. It fundamentally shifted how I approached motherhood and home management.

Mormonism teaches that external order reflects internal righteousness. A messy house becomes evidence of spiritual failure. The pressure to maintain perfect systems through pure discipline creates a breeding ground for shame when you're wired differently. When your brain doesn't naturally create and maintain routines, the church's emphasis on daily spiritual disciplines becomes another way to measure your inadequacy.

But what if the problem isn't moral failure? What if it's simply using the wrong tools for how our brains actually work?

When I finally quit my day job recently and implemented the same ADHD-friendly systems I'd been recommending to clients, everything changed. Not because I found more time (though that helped), but because I stopped trying to force neurotypical solutions onto neurodivergent problems.

You don't need to quit your job to transform your home environment. One tiny step at a time works just as well. But in true ADHD fashion, I needed a drastic change to make a drastic change. What can I say?

What Actually Works

Our home is still messy. We are messy people. But the scale of achievable mess is much lower now. As we work through our home one section at a time, things become more findable, spaces more functional. Nothing gets forgotten for school or work because everything has its designated place. Kids aren't melting down under the stress of mounting schoolwork because we've taken proactive steps to stay ahead.

The systems that work for ADHD families share common principles:

External structure for internal chaos. We can't rely on working memory, so everything important is visible. Launch pads by the front door. Visual schedules on walls. Labeled containers everywhere.

Accommodation, not aspiration. Instead of trying to remember things we always forget, we build systems that assume we'll forget. Backup supplies at home. Photos of completed homework before leaving the house. Automatic bill pay for everything possible.

Planning for dysregulation. ADHD brains get overwhelmed. Instead of pretending this won't happen, we prepare for it. Calm-down spaces ready when needed. Extra snacks always available. Earlier bedtimes during transition periods.

The Coaching Process as Faith Reconstruction

The coaching process mirrors religious deconstruction in profound ways. Both require examining deeply held beliefs about how things "should" work and asking whether those beliefs actually serve you.

In coaching, I help people get to the bottom of their struggles, find real solutions, and then troubleshoot when things change—which is typical for ADHD brains. The goal is teaching people to coach themselves out of problems, to trust their own judgment about what works for their unique situation.

This is the opposite of what I learned in church, where external authorities always knew better than my internal experience. Where struggling with systems meant I wasn't faithful enough, disciplined enough, righteous enough.

Real coaching—like real freedom—teaches you to trust yourself. To experiment with what works for your actual brain, not your idealized version of who you think you should be. To adjust and adapt as life changes, rather than white-knuckling through approaches that create more problems than they solve.

The Revolutionary Act of Functional Systems

There's something profoundly liberating about creating a home that works with your neurodivergent family instead of against it. When you stop measuring your worth by impossible standards and start building systems around how your brains actually function, everything shifts.

My kids' teachers this year might not even know I'm not neurotypical—something I used to throw in as a caveat for why we were so chaotic. Not because we've become neurotypical, but because we've learned to work with our differences instead of fighting them.

The church taught me that my struggles were character defects requiring more faith, more discipline, more surrender to external authority. Leaving that framework freed me to see our family's challenges as design features requiring different tools, not moral failings requiring spiritual correction.

When you change yourself—when you stop trying to force square pegs into round holes—you change things for everyone in your home. The ripple effects are extraordinary.

Learning to Trust Your Own Brain

This is possible for your family too. But it starts with you. The parent. The adult. When you stop accepting systems that don't serve your neurodivergent brain and start creating ones that do, everyone benefits.

The coaching process teaches self-advocacy and problem-solving. You can learn these skills using resources available for free, though working with someone who understands ADHD brains accelerates the process significantly.

The bottom line? Your house doesn't need to look like Pinterest to be a place where your family thrives. Your systems don't need to work for other families to be perfect for yours. And your worth as a parent isn't measured by how well you conform to neurotypical expectations.

Sometimes the most radical act of faith is trusting that your brain—exactly as it is—deserves tools and systems that help it flourish.

That's not just good parenting. It's freedom.

Quick Heads-UpIf this post is resonating with you and you’ve been meaning to grab The ADHD ExMo Survival Guide, now’s the time — it goes paid in just one week, so you can still download it free before then. It’s packed with the tools and mindset shifts I wish I’d had years ago, especially if you’re still untangling religious perfectionism from your home and parenting systems.

And if you already have the Back-to-School Guide or the Home Reset Toolkit but want more help actually applying those ideas in your own home, come hang out with me on August 21st for a live workshop. I’ll walk you through practical ways to adapt these systems to your family’s needs, and we’ll have time for Q&A so you can get personalized ideas for your space.

Hope to see you there — and in the meantime, go grab that free Survival Guide before it’s gone.

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Thanks for reading The Ex-Mormon ADHD Coach! If you're ready to create ADHD-friendly systems in your home, my free resources can help you get started. And if you've experienced the intersection of religious perfectionism and neurodivergent struggles, I'd love to hear your story in the comments.