Putting yourself in someone else's shoes is easy — just pull them on and tie the laces. But putting yourself in someone else's brain? That's beyond difficult, especially when that brain is moving in a million different directions at once.

I often wonder what people think it's like to have ADHD. Do they think it's like losing a train of thought? Or having too many meetings crammed into one afternoon? While I can't speak for other people with the disorder, I can speak for my husband and our five ADHD children. ADHD affects every aspect of their lives from the moment they wake up until they go to sleep. There is a simple reason for that: It's the way their brains are wired, so it affects how they take-in, process, and retrieve information about — literally — the whole world. One of the most helpful things for me over the many years spent parenting, teaching, and raising my family has been learning how their brains work.

Once we were talking about social expectations and boundaries for one of my daughters' graduations when my son announced that I had ADHD by proxy. I didn't understand at first but then he went on to say that I had come to understand their experience and way of thinking so well that it was like my DNA had changed and I had become an honorary ADHDer. That may be one of the greatest compliments I've ever received. It's certainly been a great gift to see through their eyes and learn more about the ways they experience the world. Here are just four of many things I've come to understand about their beautifully complex minds:

1. No Such Thing As a Filter

While a "normal" or neurotypical person has a “gatekeeper” that controls input by filtering out unimportant information, the ADHD brain has none. It takes everything in. Think about how overwhelming it would be if all your senses brought in everything around you, nothing was sorted, and everything was labeled “important.” Once I started to see my ADHDers experiences in those terms it became easy to see why they often held on to the wrong information or didn't register the right information.

One of our daughters described it this way: “I feel like I'm sitting in a room with thousands of televisions all playing different movies and shows. My mind jumps from one screen to another not knowing which I should be watching, unable to just focus on one of them.”

Tips and tricks: Our ADHDers have learned to separate and break things down so they can focus in on one thing. One daughter compared it to sorting a bag of M&Ms into separate colors. She sorts the thoughts and incoming stimuli so she can zero-in and hyper-focus on one thing at a time.

2. Overstimulated and Overwhelmed

As you can imagine, without being able to filter information, an ADHDer is constantly bombarded by stimuli.

It all builds up quickly. In my experience, being overstimulated turns to frustration. In our house we see two reactions to being overstimulated: those who who act out, and those who turn inward. ADHDers who act outwardly on their frustration become loud, boisterous, even angry or violent. The ones who turn that frustration inward become anxious, high strung, upset and look like they're shutting down or about to implode.

Regardless, when a person with ADHD is overstimulated, they need to clear the slate. It's like pushing a reset button. The reset button is unique to the individual. What works for one may not work for another.

Tips and tricks: Take a break. We've found that getting away from the stimulus is critical. Find a quiet place to sit for a few minutes. Engaging fidgets can help keep a situation from becoming overwhelming. For instance, our kids draw, count, write, drum fingers or bounce their knees to find a calm balance.

3. I Forgot — No, Seriously

Problems accessing, retrieving, and using memory is one of the biggest frustrations I see in my ADHDers. Sometimes I forget how hard it is for them because I'm focused on my own frustration at having to repeat instructions and refocus them over and over. I've seen the fallout from this trait in some interesting ways. For example, while impulsiveness is partially to blame for ADHDers blurting out information or speaking out of turn, it isn't the only reason. Mine will apologize for blurting and frequently add, “If I don't say it right now I'll forget.” There's a pleading in their voices that speaks to the seriousness of forgetting for them. We've seen this fear in messy bedrooms where everything has to be in plain sight for fear of losing it. We've also seen it in hoarding-esque behaviors because they are afraid to get rid of anything for fear of forgetting the memories associated with those items.

Tips and tricks: To help our kids remember things, we use checklists, sticky notes, and email or texts. Be specific. Generalizing doesn't help. For organization, we've used clear bins and shallow shelves so everything can be visible. Creating a scrapbook with pictures and smaller items can help preserve memories for years (and even generations) to come.

4. Too Many Thoughts to Think

One of my sons has been high strung and intense since he was very young. One night he looked so overwhelmed, like he was about to burst. I casually asked, “What's wrong, are you swimming in your own thoughts?” His answer was desperate and profound: “I'm not swimming. I have so many thoughts there's no room to move or swim.”

He's not alone in his experience. Most ADHDers I talk to live every waking minute of their day in this same state. My husband describes it as an array. The mention of one word or thought opens up thousands more, going out in all directions.

Tips and tricks: All those ideas and thoughts need to go somewhere outside of their heads. Keeping a journal or accordion folder for ideas allows them to be written down and pursued later. We tell our kids to keep the writing brief, just enough to remember the idea so they don't get distracted by writing it down.

Living life with ADHD is really no different than learning to live life with any other medical condition. It just takes time to find those coping mechanisms that work. While life is never going to be perfect or easy, it can become manageable.