How to cook when your brain says β€œno.”

Illustration of a mother talking on the phone

One day my mother called.

She said my 10-year-old (also quite severe ADHD πŸ™‚) told her we only eat junk food.

My first reaction? Defensive...

Then I sat with it.

Some weeks are chaos. Some evenings I’m completely spent. And β€œproper cooking” can feel like climbing uphill in sand.

I don’t want to feed my kids junk. I just don’t often have the executive function to do something better.

Self-pity doesn’t cook dinner.

So instead of trying harder, I tried softer.

I built something that helps us eat slightly better on the days when everything feels heavier.

Not perfect days. Real ones.

Simple brain illustration

Some days I stand in the kitchen and just stare.
The fridge is open. My brain is not.

It’s not laziness. It’s not that I don’t care.
It’s that cooking, for an ADHD brain, is never one task.
It’s twenty tiny decisions in a row.

So I stopped trying to be better.
I started trying to make it easier.

This is a small thing I built for low-brain days.
Made by an ADHD parent (me), who got tired of pretending dinner was simple.

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