Communication can be so, so hard. Countless books are dedicated to supporting communication; in couples, families, corporations, and beyond. One way our family tackles the communication struggle is through communicating our schedule – often and in multiple ways. This can be so helpful for our kids – espescially with multiple neurodivergencies that can make abstract concepts, like time, difficult to grasp.

It feels like time is one of the basic concepts of life, and should be easier to grasp than it is. I think back to the Mitch Album book the Timekeeper… a great read where “Father Time” is punished for trying to measure God’s greatest gift. And then to John Mark Comer’s the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, where he quotes the Roman comic playwright Plautus:

“The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours! Confound him too who in this place set up a sundial to cut and hack my days so wretchedly into small portions!”

I often wish we could go back to days where rather than our lives being ruled by a clock, our time was ordered by the natural rhythms of the earth. Rather than schedules and appointments based on hours and minutes, we’d wake when the sun rises, eat when hunger comes, work while the sun is up, and sleep when the sky grows dark.

But alas, our employers and doctors and family and others we interact with probably wouldn’t appreciate that system very much. =)

So how does our family handle timing, appointments, and the like? Espescially in a world where being more than 10 minutes late can mean you forfeit your scheduled appointment? Well, I can’t say we’re often or ever on time, but we do consistently show up where we’re expected, albeit a few minutes late. To achieve this – which is truly a wonderful feat, considering our highly varied work, therapy, and extracurricular schedules – we implement a robust planning system, and each piece works together to communicate in the ways our children need. The foundation of this is our daily rhythms (enter appointments into family google calendar when they’re made) and our weekly planning meeting. Each week, on Sunday evenings, my husband and I have our weekly meeting. It’s very simple but needed time; we go over the upcoming week’s schedule, on our shared family google calendar, and transfer relavant family/kids events to a whiteboard on the wall in our main hallway. If age appropriate, our children are responsible for managing their own calendars- for example, our 17 year old is responsbile for inviting the family calendar to all her events on her google calendar. As parents, my husband and I add everything to the family calendar for our youngest child, who is 8 and doesn’t have her own device.

Our kids know they can look at the whiteboard to see any big events each day, and if we’re really on top of it that week, what’s for dinner is also listed. =)

It’s a dry erase board, so changes are easy. It has washi tape dividing it into days of the week. It’s very simplistic. It’s great for the week, but… we needed more of a high level overview for our youngest. We tried ‘love you loops’ (making a paper chain countdown timer was introduced on Daniel Tiger in this way) as a countdown to Christmas, birthdays, and other events throughout last year, but our youngest has some neurodivergent superpowers that make this too abstract. She doesn’t cognitively understand why we can’t open multiple a day to make the time pass – why time is static, and outside of our control, when counting down to an event… this just doesn’t equate for her. As parents who practice low demand parenting to accomodate neurodivergencies, this meant the love you loops were all opened, along with most presents, well before Christmas this year. 😂

So as we headed into the new year, I thought back on the last year and the accomodations and supports that did work well for our youngest. I reflected back on a season where we used a monthly calendar on the wall as a high level overview, where our daughter could cross days off as they went by. This was a simple printable I found online, and our daughter learned that she could look at my watch to see the date. That isn’t something we can change – it is what it is – and so static dates that are not able to be changed by us became reslistic to her using this method.

I knew something like this would need to be part of our lives this year – a ‘zoomed out view’ (yearly calendar) hanging up on the wall next to the ‘zoomed in view’ (weekly dry erase board).

So I came up with a simple calendar printable that fit the visual aesthetic I was looking for, but needed a way to hang it up. I was going to order a horizontal clipboard, but realized – my Grandma had something many years ago that would work great! I reached out to my mom, but she no longer had it – so I created my own! The frame is a simple design, held together with a string that can be changed out easily to adjust the look.

I needed a calendar that could:

  • Easily be replaced. Because time can be a frustrating concept, calendars and schedules can become a target of aggression. This needed to be functional, but not a big loss – easily replacable. I can print out a new January or February, hole punch it, and have it back up on the wall in a few minutes.
  • Minimalist Design – not overwhelming. This is really to serve one of our children specifically, in the way she wants to use it. Each of our children is offered their own to use as they wish.
  • Reusable year after year – I can easily print next year’s, hole punch it, and pop it into this hanger!

The 2 hole punch design makes it easy to use this for any document! I punched the paper with my standard size 3-hole punch, but just use the 2 outer holes.

Sometimes, the simplest things can make the biggest difference. This design was inspired my something my Grandma made many years ago. I’m a fan of Dave Ramsey – who says “Giving the same advise your Grandma would” – and this so resonates! If only we could time warp with our neuridivergent kids to simpler times with less overwhelm… but we’ve been placed here, so I trust it’s where we’re supposed to be. =)

I am offering this in my Etsy shop, in case you’d like a ready-made version sent to you! You can find the frame with calendar included here: https://azcreativeworks.etsy.com/listing/1837912918/wooden-wall-hanging-calendar-frame 

Or just the printable calendar here: https://azcreativeworks.etsy.com/listing/1851816539/simple-minimalist-printable-2025

Happy 2025!

Wall Hanging Calendar