Time Blindness in Teaching: ADHD Challenges and Strategies for 2025
Running late, a snowstorm, and a two-hour delay– Sounds easy right?
Until you realize you just dismissed your class la–
Oh wait, perfectly on time.
Here's how I accidentally became the most punctual teacher ever.
At least for one day.
A Tale of Time Blindness
Picture this. You're running behind.
(I know, I know. It's hard to imagine. Just bear with me.)
There's been a storm and your school is now operating on a modified schedule.
You know this information. You've lived it a hundred times before.
You know that these changes will wreak havoc on your already bonkers schedule.
You've printed off the latest rendition of the delay schedule, and have it ready to refer to.
A crumpled wish for timeliness.
The class goes, class-like, moving along.
Fast forward to the end of your first period.
Time to get the students ready to be picked up by their homeroom teacher.
You remember a game they already know that can magically make the rowdiest group eerily quiet.
You hold up combinations of one, two, or three fingers.
Holding up two fingers, you whisper “I see other people.”
Looking out of the door you report back to them like a spy.
Another teacher walks by, and you say, “I see other teachers.”
They know that when you get to one, it means their teacher is coming.
And they need to make their line PERFECT.
All the elementary teachers reading this, are you nodding your heads?
You know how important this is.
The class is loving every second.
Still, there's that nagging doubt in the back of your mind, pulling at you.
You can't quite put your finger on it, but something just feels a bit off.
You switch your weight to the other foot and glance behind you to see if anyone's there.
Not yet.
Again, you're thinking to yourself. This lady is always, always late. Always!
Just as the most angelic of children are starting to play bumper cars with their hips, you see her rounding the corner.
“I see your teacher!” you squeal, holding up one finger.
Students mimic soldiers as they make their line ‘ruler straight,' their faces moving to game-time stance.
You open the door and silently motion for them to exit, feeling quite pleased with yourself.
But as you pass your Olympic baton on, you notice just how confused the other teacher looks.
“I hope you weren't waiting too long?” she says.
“I gave you a couple of extra minutes to make up for last time.”
It takes you a sec.
Then suddenly it starts to dawn on you.
Oh, no. No! Not again.
Reality starts crashing down like a clean-up crew after a major bash.
Looking up you find the long hand on the clock.
That modified schedule you already knew like the back of your hand?
You forgot in the act of teaching that today your classes switch on the thirty.
Not the twenty like they do every other day.
Not only were you off, but this colleague even gave you extra time.
Time that you completely wasted on ridiculous line up games instead of practicing for your program.
Time blindness, man, I'm telling you.
That and chronic disorganization.
ADHD, one.
Me…
Zero.
What Time Blindness Feels Like
If you've ever been in this situation you know how incredibly embarrassing it is.
If you're neurodivergent, you already know full well that our sense of time is not always accurate.
To put it mildly, just like in my woeful tale of schedules gone wrong.
The Emotional Impact
This was more than a careless mix up.
This was premeditated.
Despite ALL the planning, reminders, back-up reminders, and written notes.
And let's not forget that tattered delay schedule that's crunched in the corner of my jeans.
The fact that I'd done this a million times before.
All this and more, and it still flopped.
My stomach dropped in that moment and my face flushed.
Luckily I'm not an easy crier but I also have a loud face, expression-wise.
I pulled back my hand from my mouth, saying I'm sorry.
But I hadn't done anything wrong.
At least nothing to apologize to the teacher for.
Thankfully my students seemed to think it was funny.
I, however, wanted to disappear into a cloud of fairy dust and be whisked away to a magical island by my pet dragon.
You know the one.
The Last Eight Minutes
See, time blindness isn't just about running late.
For me, many of my classes were 30 minutes long.
Minus literal buckets of transition time hauling them to and fro' another class.
So keeping track of time was a constant fear in the pit of my stomach.
Of course, did I ever end early by accident?
No, just a handful of times when I didn't mean to!
Those last eight minutes of each class were when thoughts started going extra fast.
Did Bailey* have a turn yet? Gotta get her one. Did José change his mind about the maracas?
Where is my remote? Which playlist is it? Where on the playlist is the song?
(Names and other identifying details have been changed.)
All this and more. On and on.
Constant interruptions. The phone's ringing. Another grade level has a field trip today.
See, when you're engrossed in something, time can speed up and slow down somewhat randomly.
This involves hyperfixation, which I'll address more in another post.
This makes it hard to intuitively know the hour.
Meanwhile I'd be watching to make sure Chris wasn't hiding behind the speaker again.
The USB plug was still bent from the time he kicked it over during one of his episodes.
All of this would be running through my mind along with remembering to call on certain helpers to move instruments.
They'd help set up for the next class.
These were all routine tasks but they had to happen at a certain time, lest risk missing a step.
The Reality of Planning Time
What about planning periods?
Do you have those? Ever heard of 'em?
You may be thinking they sound vaguely familiar right?
They can be few and far between depending on a lot of variables outside of one's control.
There were times I was without a classroom and taught from a cart.
It was about as glamorous as it sounds.
But in a 30-minute planning period, that was barely enough time to remember where I was going next, get there, and glance at my lesson plan.
That was it. The whole thing.
And because of ADHD and time blindness, every week there were events that would surprise me.
Every time.
Like how many drums I could squish onto the cart without them all toppling over like bowling pins.
Or whether or not a certain room's speaker system would work that day.
So planning time didn't allow me to, well, plan anything.
Which meant every other important task got pushed back to the evening.
And then life and kids would interfere. So stuff would go to the next morning.
And the weekend. And repeat.
This lack of time is common for neurotypical teachers too.
But for ADHD and autistic people, it doubles the cognitive load we're already carrying.
And it just adds on to the shame spirals so many of us know.
A great opportunity for RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria) to kick in.
Why Traditional Time Management Advice Falls Short
Has any well-meaning person ever told you, “Why don't you just use a planner!“
Yes? Same.
Oh my gosh, I cringe just writing this.
When they say things like that, it makes me wonder, do they think I:
- haven't considered that idea
- haven't tried it
- haven't actually tried hard enough
- am in fact lazy and incompetent
All of the above?
For any neurotypical folx in the house today, here's a reality check.
Not only have we tried planners; we've tried ALL the planners.
We have purchased the courses and the stickers and the fun pens to keep our morale high.
We've learned about habit formation, dopamine, structures, and systems.
We've tried the erasable digital tablets that save your scribbles to a cloud.
We've put ourselves on waitlists for the latest release of the next shiny object.
We've gone all digital. We've gone paper.
We've used rewards and consequences.
We've tried dated pages and undated sheets as well.
We've tried numbered and unnumbered pages.
We've used color coding, tabs, stickers.
Did I mention stickers? Okay maybe that's just me.
The trouble is that none of these will permanently fix the intense stress we feel over these seemingly commonplace situations.
And they certainly won't help you tell time.
What Actually Helped
So what actually helped? Spoiler alert.
It wasn't a planner.
First of all, acknowledging that my brain was just different.
This was a relief. It sounds simple but it's actually quite profound.
It's a long process, of course.
The unlearning.
I listened to books like James Ochoa's Focused Forward and learned about what he calls the Emotional Distress Syndrome.
It's a PTSD-like condition many of us ADHDers experience on a daily basis.
Besides this I incorporated stronger haptic feedback timers on my watch and pre-scheduled them with an app.
(The app is called Alarmed. You may have heard me mention it before.)
So five minutes before the end of every class, I'd start getting haptic notifications.
I also got better at asking for help.
Sometimes it was from a certain student who I gave a permanent job.
Other times I would switch it up for variety.
But I also got better about not feeling as bad if I didn't give everyone a turn for that kind of task.
Like for moving the instruments, for example.
Not everyone would always get a turn and that was going to have to be okay.
Not everyone was ready.
In any event, these were some strategies that worked for me.
The student jobs one is particularly valuable.
The right job can sometimes help to transform the kid who ‘hates' you and your class into a fan just by giving them a job.
Win, win.
Moving Forward
So, time blindness doesn't go away when you get diagnosed.
Or when you realize what it is doing in your current life.
But learning about it does help, to a certain extent.
It's also about experimenting with different tools and ideas until you find something that works for you.
And then knowing that you will likely grow bored of it, and want to change it up.
And that's okay.
Learning to love and appreciate myself just as I am is a journey, as I'm sure it is for many of you.
Do you see yourself in this post and dream of connecting with other similar folx?
Come find us on Facebook.
I can't wait to see you there. ❤️