Always park facing downhill
What Matchbox cars and parallel parking taught me about helping my ADHD teen—and myself
We set up Matchbox cars and Lego road plates on the dining room floor. For the next ten minutes, my husband demonstrated proper parallel parking technique: lining up, cutting the wheel, reversing to a 45-degree angle, straightening out, cutting again.
Yes, I’m an educator. Yes, he used to run toy companies. This is how we roll.
Our 16-year-old just got his learner’s permit, and he is obsessed with driving. With an 18-year-old who is also not yet licensed, we are deep in driver education mode. After the toy demonstration, they practiced on the driveway course. Now that the older two are at boarding school, we have to grab vacation moments to teach the life lessons we can.
Driving wasn’t the only lesson of the week. Fall grades also came home, prompting a lesson about study habits.
One of our kids prefers to do homework in the morning rather than late at night. The challenge is that sometimes this child can’t get out of bed when the alarm goes off.
My entire family has ADHD. It often falls to me to help develop strategies that make their work feel easier. So we walked through the morning routine together: wake up, open curtains, take medication, start homework.
“What could you do the night before,” I asked, “to make it easier to get right to work in the morning?”
We identified possibilities. Take a shower earlier at night. Lay out the homework. Have everything ready for a 5:30 AM start.
I’ve used this “reduce the friction” metaphor for years. But as we talked, another image came to me.
“Think about it this way,” I said. “Imagine you have a car that has trouble getting started. First gear is missing.”
He looked at me.
“You have two choices. Every morning, you could round up a bunch of friends to push you until you’re moving fast enough to shift into second gear.”
He nodded.
“Or—” I paused. “You could make a point to always park facing downhill.”
His eyes widened.
“If you park facing downhill, the car starts rolling as soon as you release the parking brake. You don’t need first gear. You don’t need anyone to push you. But you have to think about it the night before. You have to set yourself up for an easy start.”
I watched the light bulb go on.
“So what might it look like,” I asked, “to park your car downhill at night so the morning just flows?”
I was so pleased with myself that I called my husband up from the basement to hear the metaphor. He smiled.
“Exactly! I know making breakfast will feel like moving through sludge, so I set the pan and spatula out the night before, fill the coffee pot, and put plates and forks on the table. That’s how I park facing downhill.”
It’s not just about morning routines.
For me, it’s about writing. I know I struggle to start from a blank page, so I’ve learned to record voice memos while I walk or drive. Then, when I’m ready to write, I copy the transcript, paste it into a doc, and I’m already rolling.
As mothers in leadership, we spend so much energy pushing—pushing ourselves, pushing our teams, pushing our kids. What if we focused on positioning instead?
Where could you park facing downhill?
🕊️
SAM
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Fantastic metaphor! I’m going to use this with my 13 year old (the one who I gave their first driving lesson to this fall in our own white Volvo). They are all about driving and this might just click! For the fifteen year old too!
This metaphor hits so hard I started crying (insert dramatic eyeroll emoji). I know I do this for myself instinctually - make sure I'm ready to go in the morning for work, lay out my running clothes, check my work calendar, text the sitter with any changes in the next day's schedule...but I realize that its all in service of making sure I have bandwidth to roll my family's cars up the hills, turn them around and get them going in the moring. With a similar family dynamic (teens and ADHD), uphill is the name of the game right now.