My husband has been taking a course all week in the assessment of ADLs. That’s OT-speak for Activities of Daily Living. Basically, he’s assessing whether or not people can manage their lives independently.
There are physical components to this. (Do you have the shoulder range to comb your own hair? The back strength to wash your own tub?) But there are also plenty of psychological components. To live on your own, you must be somewhat logical and organized.
For example, if you dump all of your stuff on top of the desk when you come home, and then your phone rings but you miss the call because the phone is under the pile of dumped stuff, you lose a point on Min’s assessment scale.
If you begin a load of laundry, but get completely distracted partway through and don’t return to the laundry for several hours, you lose a point.
If you go downstairs to get a pen, then forget what you’re looking for once you’re down there, you lose a point.
Can you see where this is going?
Obviously, I am not independently capable of my ADLs.
Uh oh, I think I’m in trouble as well! I suppose this also goes for sending your kid to school late because you were filling in her kid sister’s preschool registration paperwork at the last minute?
I think if you have children under 5, you should automatically get an extra 10 (or 20) points of grace on the scale. I’ll propose this to my resident OT, and see if he can get the norms adjusted… 🙂