I know for some people with ADD/ADHD they cannot get to a place on time ever. My oldest daughter for example really struggles with time. If you say we need to leave at 4:00, she interprets that as maybe she should start getting ready at 4:00ish. She doesn't do it to be rude...it's just how her mind works.
For me it's more complicated than that. I learned early on in my childhood that being on time was life threateningly vital...if I was late to something, humanity as we know it would be lost forever.
So, as you can imagine, my family was very early to a lot of things. I have lots of memories of helping to set up events.
Fast forward 30+ years and you can imagine the struggles of a mom who had an animal like instinct to being early and a daughter whose idea of early was not missing the entire event.
Then add a couple more kids to the mix and my general dislike of setting up and the idea of time gets more complicated. I'm always trying to figure out things like: What time to I need to leave in order to get there after several other people have arrived so I don't have to set up. How long will it really take me to drive there (for some reason I always forget I don't have a flying car and traffic could be an issue)? If I say I want to leave at 4:00 what is the likelihood of everyone coming with me being ready at 4:00 and did I take into account the time I would need to go back in the house several times for items I forgot.
You put this all together and I started being late to events which triggered anxiety deep within me. All the way to the event I would stress and yell at traffic and generally not be very much fun to be around. I'd arrive all stressed out and be mad at myself for being late.
So I have learned to adapt over the years. But one thing I still do is manage to pack my schedule too tight on some days. I'll have an appointments throughout the day and someone will ask me to do something and I'll say, yes, I have 35.6 minutes free, sure I can do that. And then it will take 41.2 minutes to accomplish and I'll be a ball of stress because the rest of my day is thrown off. A perfect example of that would be my wedding day which I will put into it's own post...simply because I think it deserves it :-)
The last ingredient that goes into my time soup is distraction. I will have a schedule, I'll have planned out the time I need to leave the house, I'll plan out the time that I need to start getting ready in order to leave the house, I'll see I have a few minutes to kill until that time and I'll sit down to the computer. Next thing I know it's 5 minutes after I was supposed to be leaving and the stress begins.
This happened a lot when I was having to pick up kids from school every day. Thank goodness for the bus...I no longer have to be that late mom.
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