Why Your Teen Is Always Late: Time Blindness, ADHD, and What Helps

People who experience time blindness, it's almost like they're not aware of the time. They might be doing something, and then it's almost like they wake up and tune back in. It's like, my gosh, an hour and a half passed, and I thought I would get this done in half an hour. So time blindness can lead to sort of increased emotional intensity at home.

Late again. Panic last minute. Having a hard time starting homework, having a hard time stopping a video game and coming down for dinner. If any of this sounds like your households, it might be something called time blindness. And today, we're gonna talk more about it and how to better understand it and parents what you can do.

And can I

just jump in here? The way that Suzanne very calmly described that, late again, not down for dinner, is absolutely the antithesis of what it feels like, I think, to parents when someone in the family and it it could be the parent having time blindness experiences time blindness. It might sound more like, we're late again. You've gotta get your stuff done. Like, wait a minute.

You didn't you didn't hand that in? That was but but you have to get that done by tomorrow. Did you start? So it sounds more like that. Suzanne's just very chill today.

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way I started. Just wait.

Yeah. Just wait. Here we go.

Alright. So time blindness, what is it? I I mean, I think people may have heard of it, particularly if you're parenting a young person with ADHD. This is a term that you might have heard. Time blindness is really this difficulty feeling time.

Right. Gauging it and judging it. Right. And so for for those of you watching, you'll see this. If not, I'm gonna describe it.

I brought two glasses from home today. And so one is, I think, what you would call a highball glass, and and one is a lowball glass. And, Annalise, if you had to take a guess, which one has more water in it? What would you say?

You know, by look, this is counterintuitive. I'm kind of leaning towards mine, which is the lower glass because it's just wider, and so it appears like it's it's it's got a lot in it versus this tall one. But I also could see someone say looking at

the tall one saying, no. It's it's got more water. It's it's taller. So I'm not really sure, honestly, looking at these, which has more water? Well, brace yourself for the surprise of your life because I used a measuring cup today.

And, actually, they're the same amount. Both of them have a cup of water in them, but they look different. Right? And they can feel different. Now a lot of people might be listening to this and be like, yeah.

Yeah. I totally get that. Like, when I'm out having a great time with friends, you know, it's like the night goes by like that or those really boring work meetings. Those seem to drone on and on forever. But what's interesting about

what you just said there is there's an awareness. Right? There there's a reflection back to, oh my god. We had so much fun. The night went so quickly, or, oh, this meeting is droning on, so I'm feeling like this is going on and on.

Timelindness, I think, is a little bit different. For people who experience time blindness, it's almost like they're not aware of the time. It's almost like they might be doing something, and then they describe a feeling of, like, sort of, like, getting lost or not being aware of how much time has passed. And then it's almost like they wake up and tune back in. It's like, oh my gosh.

An hour and a half passed, and I thought I would get this done in half an hour. Mhmm. Right? So it's a little

bit different. Absolutely. And the intensity of it. And so, you know, we find this a lot for people who have ADHD.

Mhmm.

Other types of neurodivergence as well. This comes up a lot. So there's this really imperitability to kind of feel engaged time. And then there's also something that Russell Barkley calls temporal myopia. And so it's this, like, ability or struggle to kind of see things that are more distant in the future Mhmm.

And to be able to, like, plan for them Right. And kind of pace yourself. So it's like this idea that, like, okay. If I'm driving down the road and I see the the you know, there's a cone in the road right here. Right.

It's right in front of me. Great. I jerk the wheel, and I move out of the way. And people with time blindness can do that. No problem.

But let's say I'm driving, and I see that, like, down the road a little bit, there's a cone on the road. And so I might, without time blindness, start thinking like, okay. Should I move is there another lane for me to move to?

Should I slow down?

Should I put my signal light? Yep. What should I do? Let me start planning for it now because I kind of see that coming. It'd be better to have a plan now.

Whereas individuals who have time blindness, they know that the cone is down there. They can see it. Right? But their brain isn't activating to get them to start planning and taking action. It's kinda fuzzy abstract.

It's like it's not happening until boom. It's right in front of you.

And, you know, in in thinking about this in tweens and teens in the middle and high school years and certainly into the college years when kids are so much more independent, time becomes really, really important in a way that it wasn't when they were younger. Yes. And so we have to have a lot of, you know, thoughtfulness and sympathy for that. If if you experience or if your teenager experiences time blindness, suddenly, there are more activities, there are more assignments, there are more requirements, and greater expectations that the teenager's gonna stay on top of it themselves. Yeah.

And so it's this kind of you know, if if a younger child experiences time blindness, that still is a problem and still can be frustrating for sure in the family. Yeah. But there does tend to be a little bit more parental management and a little less work demands placed on the young person. But as you get older and those independence and the work increase or just the time that the requirements of your life increase, that interaction being able not being able to fully track and experience time with having more demands on your time can really lead to a lot of stress in families. Huge amounts of stress.

So I want to you know, we

we kind of gave these examples, but I wanna talk about what it actually looks like and kind of feels like in a family. Yeah. Right? Okay. So I think of it in a couple of different buckets.

One, a teen being late a lot of the time. Right? Parents announce to everybody, okay. We're headed out for the day. We're leaving in ten minutes, and all of a sudden you hear the shower go off.

Oh, yes. And everyone's like, wait a minute. She's taking a shower right now? Like, there's no way she's gonna be able to get ready and in the car Right. In ten minutes.

So the so the teen is late, or maybe their stuff is late. The thing they were supposed to do, the thing they were supposed to hand in, thing the they were supposed to bring to the neighbor

Mhmm.

Doesn't happen. Right? Mhmm. And so there's those the team being late and their stuff being late tends to lead to a lot of stress and big emotions. So time blindness can lead to sort of increased emotional intensity at home.

Right? Hugely. Because for first of all, missed opportunities. Right?

I mean, I've worked with a lot of young people who missed an application for something that was really important to them, missed a job interview, missed paying a bill for something and that got fined. Right? So sometimes there's financial consequences. And it and it may

be with a genuine belief and and wish to do the thing. You know, people who experience time blindness are so often misunderstood as not being responsible or being lazy, or they may really have wanted to hand in the application, but they didn't realize that the application had six parts to it, and two of those parts required signatures of other people, right, or how long that would take to get it done. Yeah. Yep. And so it's also a loss for if if we're talking about a teenager with time blindness, for the teen.

Right? So not only are they letting other people down and not getting the thing done, but they're also maybe losing out themselves Mhmm. Which is sad and I think often missed.

And then at times getting feedback, you know, well, you'll learn a lesson from this. And they certainly are learning that they are incompetent, frustrating to other people, enraging to other people, like, all

of that they can't do it right.

Right. And yet not learning maybe what is causing this or how to work around it. Right? So we have all the lateness stuff. And then, like, you're mentioning those big emotions and reactions.

Because if you think about it, can you imagine the panic? Right? You really wanna do this application, and then you find out you needed two signatures. Right? Right.

Or you were supposed to bring something for the group project, and you realize at midnight that you need your parent to drive you to the grocery store that's closed. Right? I we see a lot of explosions in young people, over panic and stress over these things. Right? And and then sometimes a lot of, like, anger, frustration, you know, coming out at parents.

And parents are like, woah. This is on you. Like, it's midnight. You should have told me earlier, which is fair and valid.

Which which is understandable Absolutely. But is missing sort of, you know, the issue at hand. Right? And we've we've used this analogy before, but it's like, you know, when if that teenager needed to get out to somewhere and had a big cast on their leg, you know, or had to be in a wheelchair, we'd know that we have to leave extra time, and we'd allow for that. It would be very much in the parents', you know, realm of sight.

Oh, yeah. There's an issue here that's slowing this person down. But time blindness isn't always in people's awareness or sight. And instead, the assumptions can be made about the teenager, you know, that that they're irresponsible or that something else is going on when really it's it's a neurological difference kind

of thing. And the last one I wanna mention, because I think this is a unique one that not everyone talks about, but is this kind of stuck in waiting mode. Yes. And I I see this a lot for teenagers when, you know, maybe they have one or two things coming in the day. Like, let's say on a Saturday or Sunday, they've got a game later in the day, or they're babysitting two hours from then, and they have a ton of other stuff that they need to do.

And so a parent reasonably might expect, like, okay. You can get your work done before you go to that. But sometimes teens with and and and adults with time blindness can kind of feel like the gauging of that time before like, they can't quite figure out how to kind of get things in the middle there, and so they wind up doing nothing until that kind of structured thing is happening. And so they kind of feel stuck waiting to get started. Yeah.

And so then it feels like there's a lot of, like, misuse of time. Right? Like, not being able to use the time that they have effectively.

But but that misuse of time, you know, or or that the perception of misuse of time leads, you know, teachers or, you know, bosses at a at a summer job to say things like they need to learn to manage their time better. They need to do a better job of, you know, planning in advance and getting here on time, and they need to be more responsible. Right? And that messaging that, you know, maybe they're selfish or they're not mature enough or they're you know, a little bit of a missed mark. Right?

And just more ways that I think the teenager can feel let down in themselves, but also more emotional.

Yeah. And this can create, I think, for families in particular, a lot a lot of conflict. You know, like your example about the if you broke your leg, like, I had an experience a couple of years ago where I went and got my eyes dilated at an eye doctor exam, a yearly exam. And do you know how when you're getting it dilated, like Yeah. It starts to kind of go blurry?

And then after a time period, it's like, really? Like, you cannot read things on your phone. I mean, it's it's virtually impossible. And I got dilated. I got checked or whatever.

And as I was leaving, I looked at my phone, and I still had, like, a little bit of vision. And I had a clinical emergency. Come on. And there was a concern for safety, and I needed to get phone numbers, and I needed Annalise, when I tell you because my vision was going and going, and I'm frantically trying to get into my phone to get and I couldn't. I I actually couldn't.

The level of panic and stress that arose

in you experienced. Because

I I wanted to figure it out, and I wanted to read, but my eyes wouldn't work and wouldn't do it. Right? And so I see this. I was so flooded emotionally, and I I think about that sometimes with young people when they're in my office that I think they kind of go often in one of two ways or they go both ways where they become so flooded overwhelmed because of these brain differences. Right?

The lower activity in the prefrontal cortex, the the reduced or inconsistent dopamine. Right? They become so flooded and overwhelmed with panic. This is where then a lot of times we can see a lot of conflict, you know, at home over this, parents' understandable frustration, and and kids' panic. And then other times, I see young people just kinda check out because they're so overwhelmed by it that it just it's like, whatever.

I don't care. I just won't do the thing. I won't turn it in. I won't and that kind of back and forth. Right?

And so this is not a character flaw deficit. I tell young people all the time, like, there is a difference in how your brain is functioning. And and I can even prove it to you because we do know that for some people with the use of stimulant medication and those changes that that can enact in the brain Sure. That actually time blindness can be significantly reduced in that way. So so I can prove to you that, like, it is a brain difference.

You're not just an irresponsible, lazy

And but I love your analogy to the eye dilation example. Right? Because ultimately, over time, you know, your your eyes would you you return to normal, and you could see. But that intention and I think that is the experience.

People were waiting for me to call. I mean, I was supposed to be doing something too. Very important to

for for safety.

Help you know, people are supposed to be making phone calls. I could not find the address of someone because

I And the level of stress that that put you under, and that's that's going to be what a teenager's going to feel Yeah. When they're feeling like other people are you know, we're I'm supposed to do something. I'm supposed to be somewhere. I'm supposed to have completed something and what tension that creates for them on the regular. Right?

And your siblings are annoyed with you. Yep. Your friends can get annoyed with you. Your co like, this is where, you know, we think so often about what kinds you know, young people with ADHD get so much negative feedback over time. And, like, you when you think about this, you can kind of see the big wide realm Yeah.

In which that can happen. And so it is so important for people to kind of understand what time blindness is for themselves, for parents, for teachers, because then we can have a little bit more agency to understand where this is coming from. It's not purposeful. It's not intentional. And then what can we do to try to redesign the environment a little bit, help you kind of build some things around you that might make it more likely for you to be able to enact things in a timely manner?

Right? Like, what what can we do here?

And I think the first thing we do is is really comes from everything that we've been discussing so far, which is engender that understanding, compassion. When you described that ideation example, I can really relate to that. You know? I can really relate to how stress and feel compassion for you. When I sit with teenagers who struggle with time blindness, who really have good intentions to get their schoolwork done, to not stay up every night till two in the morning Mhmm.

You know, and and have their parents upset at them that they're not getting enough sleep. They really intend for that, but then they say, like, I don't know what happened. You know? To be able to have compassion for that and be sort of gentler in our interpretations around that, that in and of itself is a good start. Huge start.

Right? So and then to understand. So they're losing track of time in general, and they're also struggling to plan for it in the future. Mhmm. Right?

So those two things, you know, coming together, There are some kind of strategies to help in the moment.

Mhmm.

Right? Yeah. Some one I don't know what you were thinking, but one thing I often, you know, work with teens on is kind of, you know, setting timers or setting alarms and kind of almost making it a game. Like, I'm going to attempt to work on this for, whatever, twenty minutes, and I've got this goal. And the timer's going and that cue of, like, okay.

And and a break can come in twenty minutes. You know? And for some people, it might be ten minutes. Right? But just that that I'm working against the clock can help bring a little flush a little bit of that dopamine.

Like, I've gotta get that done.

Yeah. Like a little urgency, a little rev to competitiveness or something to the system.

Yeah. To kind of to kind of challenge yourself into doing that. Mhmm.

Timers are a great idea. I've got a lot of people that they make me laugh because they'll they'll do a lot, like, their room with their Amazon Alexa, you know, or Google or whatever. And and they'll name the timers. Like, you know, remind me to do this. In thirty minutes, remind me that I want to take a shower.

You know, in an hour, remind me that I need to do laundry. So that way, they don't realize the next morning they have no underpants. Right? So it's like as they're thinking of things. Right?

Because often what can happen is, like, you you can get diverted. Sure. So if they're trying to work on something, they'll have something they can talk into Yeah. Set this, you know, alarm for this amount of time. So then if they feel some relief, like, okay, that thing about doing my laundry or whatever, taking the shower is there.

I can let go of it, and I can try to bring my focus back to my assignment I'm working on or whatever it is. So timers are great. Clocks a lot of clocks sometimes

can really be helpful. In every room. Every single room. In the shower. Yeah.

In the, you know, clocks. Because I have a lot

of young people, and I I love this idea of first of all, like, letting your mind meander sometimes is wonderful, and we'll we'll get to that. But and and the shower is a great place where a lot of people do that, myself included. But that can turn into a lot a lot of time, which makes you late and makes people mad, but also uses up a lot of hot water and can make people mad for that reason too. So clocks in the shower, waterproof ones, you can play music, whatever. Like, that's a really good thing too so that if you really only have time for the fifteen minute shower and it's not gonna be a forty five minute let your brain go everywhere, you have it.

Some people like those countdown timers Yes. Instead so they can kind of visually see it. You can look that up on, like, Amazon or any store, you know, where it's kind of like a a red chunk of time you set it to, and then it minimizes over time. Visual calendars. I've worked with a lot of young people, and we've bought big wipe erase, like, sticky calendars so we can kind of map things out and have it, like, more tangible, like, off their phone, right where Yep.

Where they can see it. Yep. So just trying in some ways to make time feel a little bit more real Mhmm. And jumping out at you. You know?

Like, taking some of the responsibility out of your own head and kind of putting it on these different objects. Right. I think too for a lot

of teenagers that experience this, they can just be overwhelmed in general by all of it because there have been so many experiences of time blindness where it hasn't worked out. So, oh, no. I have to go home, and I have to do this thing again where it's not gonna work out, and I'm gonna stay up till two, and the paper won't be done. And Yeah. I don't know what happened.

You know? And so, you know, sometimes another, you know, thing that I work on using the using the timers, but even just getting started, I think sometimes when it feels like the starting is gonna lead to such a long Oh, yeah. Thing. So another thing I often will set timers to remind to just start work for five minutes. We have, like, a five minute rule or a ten minute rule where it's like, I'm not even saying I'm I'm gonna complete this assignment, but I'm gonna get into it for five minutes.

So now it's like, oh, I'm starting. And sometimes if they get started, they can keep going. Yeah. You know, in that struggling to plan and start and, you know, get it going, just get in into it for five minutes. Yeah.

Yeah. And that can just get a little momentum going.

Yeah. Get the wheels starting to turn. Another thing sometimes I'll do with young people, like, if if they're perpetually kind of showing up late for thing, you know, is we'll do a little, like, time tracking kind of backing out of time. You know? So I'll talk to them about, okay.

What time do you have to be at school? Or what time do you have to be at soccer practice? And, like, let's alright. Well, it's gonna take five minutes to walk from the car out to the field. And actually, it probably takes two minutes for you to open the trunk and get your cleats out and get because a lot of times, you know, young people haven't thought about all those things.

They're just thinking, it takes me fifteen minutes to get to the field. So Yep. If practice at three, I'll leave at 02:45. You're gonna be late. Right?

So sometimes when we can kind of, like, backtrack out and think about, like, each step of the way, which can feel a little painstaking sometimes, but how long do you think that takes? And then it's like, actually,

you need to leave twenty five minutes before practice. Right. In order to

And so sometimes just building up some of that time awareness and kind of planning it out, padding in a little time, usually, it's not helpful to have excessive amounts of extra time. That can kind of backfire. But, like, let's give you always give you, like, a five minute room for error, you know, in in case you forget something, which that's the other thing I forgot to mention, right, is that there's a lot of other executive functions sometimes that impact young people who are neurodivergent. And so things like forgetting something at home or not you know, can add in a little extra time too, and that can also derail them even when they've made a really good plan for time. So sometimes, like, building a little wiggle room Yep.

For some error missteps.

Room, but also building in some free brain time.

Yeah.

Some time you know, I have so many teams that I work with that really need and benefit from their downtime. Yes. Right? Because managing, you know, regulating their energy and attention to do stuff when they lose track of time is really difficult. Right?

And, again, often not being understood. You know? But just getting that sort of free time to kind of be creative or relax their brain or zone out is important to make time for that so that when they have to regulate it and have to be getting things done, they've had those those moments of, those brain times. It feels so good, right, to have that unstructured like, when

they just know, like, okay. Saturday, I'm done with my work or my play practice or, you know, whatever it is. By 02:00 and from two until I go to bed at midnight, like, I'm off the clock. Like, no. Like, I can just kind of do as I feel.

Right. And that is really recharging, and it's really relaxing and releasing. And to have the permission from themselves Yep. And the permission from family members

If they can understand, which we would. We'd say, oh, yeah. Go sit on the couch and elevate your leg with ice on it. Yeah. And we'd say, please don't move for, you know, two hours because that's really slow.

Have to do anything. That's what need

to do. And this is the same thing for the brain, right, to get that, you know, sort of break. Very important for time blindness. And then

one other thing I would add in, because I know we talked a little bit about that, like, distance and and planning for the future. And so a lot of times, I hear interventions in in schools and with families, and they're on the right track of chunking larger assignments or chunking larger tasks into smaller things. Right? So, okay, you've got a paper due in two weeks. How about you give me an outline in three days, and then in a week from now, you give me a rough draft?

That is a great idea. But for a lot of people with time blindness, that is still too many kind of stop and starts. And so I just like to talk with young people about something. It's like, the more you can kinda touch something, like, just, like, keep tapping it. You know?

So okay. That thing is due, but you gotta read a book for it. So, like, let's read a little bit every day before bed, or let's so it's like you're never quite you know, even, like, carry the book in your bag all day. Like, you're never quite getting rid of that assignment. Like, it's it's kinda swimming in your more immediate zone more regularly.

So it's not like you do the one thing you wait for the teacher fee. It goes away. Like, let's let's just keep tapping it. Keep it close.

Yeah. Very good. Very good. Of course, you know, we're not physicians, but certainly stimulant medication, which is often prescribed for ADHD, can help. Right?

It helps to, you sort of flush dopamine a little bit, which really brings people a little more in contact with time. And so that is another option to speak to a physician about if you think that this may be going on. Yeah.

And if maybe you're even trying some of these other things and it's not helping and not working and the level of frustration. Right? Just I think it's really helpful for young people and families to know that there are a lot of options. Right? So, you know, to not lose hope, there's a lot of things that we can try to do to help.

And sometimes we try one thing and it doesn't work, but a few weeks later, it swings back and it helps a little bit. You know? So, like, let's not give up. There's a lot of things we can do. If one thing doesn't work, let's try another option and see what we can get going here.

Are we close to our what now?

I think we are. I'd like

to jump in with the what now. Everything we've described here, certainly the most important in my mind is understanding and compassion. Yeah. Really understanding what's going on and not mislabeling what's happening for someone. But I also just if this is a picture of something going on in your house, either for yourself or for your teenager experiencing time blindness and having having difficulty getting things done or tracking or whatnot, keep in mind, even if you use some of the interventions that we've discussed or your teenager tries the timers and it doesn't work quite right or or it's helpful to some degree, they may never get to where someone who doesn't experience time blindness is.

There are all types of people There and time blindness can bring incredible amounts of creativity, thoughtfulness. It can bring different gifts. So the goal is not to make someone with time blindness not experience it ever, or it's more to help them cope with it like you would cope with a broken leg. But, you know, that this is a part of how their brain works. They can understand it and adapt to it.

You can understand it and adapt to it, but they may never present like your other child who maybe gets everything in on time or has a lot of anxiety and is thinking all the time about what's coming up. That's not what we're looking for.

Mhmm.

We're just looking for everyone to cope a little better, understand each other better, and feel more effective.

Mhmm. Thank you for that.

You're welcome, Suzanne.

Alright. A lot of people are experiencing a lot of different things, and we don't always have the time to talk about it out loud with each other. So it can be helpful sometimes to share things like this with another parent or a family member that you think might benefit from listening to this, and we would appreciate it too because it's it's why we're here and we're doing this. You know, we share this information in our offices kind of one on one, and and we hope to share it with more people. So please share this episode.

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