“Socks on the floor, socks on the floor;
drive your parents crazy with your socks on the floor.
Take ‘em off your feet, leave them all around;
drive your parents crazy with your socks on the floor.”
{Rap to the beat of “Pants on the Ground“}

When you are raising a child with ADD, the simplest tasks can be monumental.   My son is what everyone refers to as “high maintenance” – my husband and I simply refer to him as “The Triplets.”  From the time he was a toddler, he has outpaced us both.

He has never liked wearing shoes and socks.  When he was in elementary school, I would pick him and the first thing he would do would be to take off his shoes and socks in the car.  He would wait until the last minute in the morning to put them on, frequently grabbing them in his hands to put them on in the car on our way to school.  One day, we got to school and he had his socks on, but “uh-oh, Mom, I forgot my shoes.”

As he got older and rode the bus to school, he would come home and immediately take off his socks – in the living room, dining room, family room – they would land anywhere.  When he would be away at camp during the summer, I would move a piece of furniture to clean, and there would be a dirty sock.  My husband and I always joked that when he grew up and left home we would still be finding his socks in inconspicuous places.  No matter what we tried, we were unable to get our son keep his socks picked up.

Now that he is in high school, we decided it was time to issue the ultimatum – if we find socks on the floor, they go in the trash.  When they are all gone, he would have to buy new socks using his own money.  Miraculously the socks found their way to the dirty clothes hamper and no longer were we finding them strewn all over the house.

This past summer, while he was away at camp, I didn’t find any sock traces when I cleaned.  And it struck me that I missed finding those socks.   He finally learned to pick up his socks and now I missed the reminders.   It’s a sign that he is growing up and will soon be going off to college, where he will probably leave his socks on the floor.  When he leaves, I will still look for his socks on the floor.