Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
Programmes built on crossing the midline or on balance and inner ear work do not appear to beat ordinary exercise. If movement is what you are after, movement is available free.
These packages come with a theory about why they work, and the theory is usually where the confidence comes from rather than from the results. What they all contain is a child moving regularly with someone paying attention, which is the part with a plausible claim on any benefit. Walking, swimming, football or a scooter ride give you the same ingredient without a subscription, and the money saved can go somewhere with better evidence behind it.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He has chosen you and placed no hardship in your religion (Quran 22:78). Simple routes are not lesser routes, in faith or in a family's week.
وَجَٰهِدُواْ فِي ٱللَّهِ حَقَّ جِهَادِهِۦۚ هُوَ ٱجۡتَبَىٰكُمۡ وَمَا جَعَلَ عَلَيۡكُمۡ فِي ٱلدِّينِ مِنۡ حَرَجࣲۚ مِّلَّةَ أَبِيكُمۡ إِبۡرَٰهِيمَۚ هُوَ سَمَّىٰكُمُ ٱلۡمُسۡلِمِينَ مِن قَبۡلُ وَفِي هَٰذَا لِيَكُونَ ٱلرَّسُولُ شَهِيدًا عَلَيۡكُمۡ وَتَكُونُواْ شُهَدَآءَ عَلَى ٱلنَّاسِۚ فَأَقِيمُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَءَاتُواْ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَٱعۡتَصِمُواْ بِٱللَّهِ هُوَ مَوۡلَىٰكُمۡۖ فَنِعۡمَ ٱلۡمَوۡلَىٰ وَنِعۡمَ ٱلنَّصِيرُ
Strive hard for God as is His due: He has chosen you and placed no hardship in your religion, the faith of your forefather Abraham. God has called you Muslims––both in the past and in this [message]––so that the Messenger can bear witness about you and so that you can bear witness about other people. So keep up the prayer, give the prescribed alms, and seek refuge in God: He is your protector––an excellent protector and an excellent helper
Qur’an 22:78read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A pilot randomised controlled trial gave thirty children with ADHD who had not taken medication twelve weeks of moderate to vigorous exercise, and looked at resilience and symptoms. Thirty children is very few and a pilot is designed to see whether a bigger trial is worth running, so this is preliminary. It is enough to say that plain exercise is a reasonable thing to try, and not enough to say how much it will do.
Liang X, Xu RH, Zhao M, Qu L, Shum DHK. (2024). Impact of a physical exercise intervention on psychological resilience and mental ill-being in medical-naïve children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a pilot randomised controlled trial.. Psychology, health & medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
If the working part is the movement, you can have the movement without paying for the theory wrapped around it.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Play based programmes that build executive skills in young children have done reasonably well with children at risk of struggling at school. None has yet been tested in children actually diagnosed with ADHD, and that is a real difference rather than a technicality.
There is a headband worn at night that stimulates a nerve in the face, cleared by regulators and tested against a dummy version in a single trial. Some children improved. Some felt sick or slept badly and stopped.
Two ideas will let you judge most claims for yourself. In a good trial nobody involved knows who got the real treatment, and a study of five people can be swung by one of them having a good month.