Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
Programmes built on tones through headphones and balance drills have not been shown to help ADHD. If a child does seem steadier during them, the likeliest reason is that something is occupying the part of them that goes looking for stimulation.
That effect is real enough, and it is cheap to get elsewhere. A walk, a job with the hands, background sound they choose themselves, all of it occupies the same restlessness without a course fee. The test is whether anything is different on the days between sessions, and with these programmes it usually is not.
Qur’an and Sunnah
seek help through steadfastness and prayer (Quran 2:153). What is always to hand costs nothing and does not stop when the course does.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱسۡتَعِينُواْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ مَعَ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ
You who believe, seek help through steadfastness and prayer, for God is with the steadfast
Qur’an 2:153read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
An updated systematic review of treatments for adolescents with ADHD, covering fifteen years of research, found behaviour therapy had only preliminary support and that non-pharmacological options generally came out behind medication. A review of the field cannot rule out one particular product, and it does show how rarely approaches like these hold up when they are examined.
Sibley MH, Kuriyan AB, Evans SW, Waxmonsky JG, Smith BH. (2014). Pharmacological and psychosocial treatments for adolescents with ADHD: an updated systematic review of the literature.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Feeding the need for stimulation settles someone for as long as it lasts, which is not the same as treating anything.
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
If someone has genuine positional vertigo, get it treated, and do not expect the treatment to touch their ADHD. Both things can be true at the same time.
Headsets have become cheap enough to sit in an ordinary consulting room, and the use with the best backing is graded exposure. You can set the intensity exactly and repeat it as often as the person needs.
Being told you are too sensitive is usually someone else's comfort talking. Feeling things strongly is not the problem to solve; what to do once the feeling has arrived is.