Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
When a young person tells you something in their own blunt words, meet them there. Laughing together buys more trust than a well judged correction ever will.
Correct the language and you sort yourself into the same bin as every other disappointed adult, and after that the useful information stops arriving. Meeting someone's tone does not mean agreeing with everything or abandoning your own manner. If they turn up with a rude list of everything that distracts them in class, the list is the victory. Notice how much more easily things get told to you afterwards.
Qur’an and Sunnah
You were gentle in your dealings with them (Quran 3:159). The verse goes on to say that harshness would have scattered them, which is a fair description of what correcting someone's language at the wrong moment does.
فَبِمَا رَحۡمَةࣲ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ لِنتَ لَهُمۡۖ وَلَوۡ كُنتَ فَظًّا غَلِيظَ ٱلۡقَلۡبِ لَٱنفَضُّواْ مِنۡ حَوۡلِكَۖ فَٱعۡفُ عَنۡهُمۡ وَٱسۡتَغۡفِرۡ لَهُمۡ وَشَاوِرۡهُمۡ فِي ٱلۡأَمۡرِۖ فَإِذَا عَزَمۡتَ فَتَوَكَّلۡ عَلَى ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُتَوَكِّلِينَ
By an act of mercy from God, you [Prophet] were gentle in your dealings with them- had you been harsh, or hard-hearted, they would have dispersed and left you- so pardon them and ask forgiveness for them. Consult with them about matters, then, when you have decided on a course of action, put your trust in God: God loves those who put their trust in Him
Qur’an 3:159read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised trial tested a deliberate strategy for keeping families with high needs engaged in group behavioural parent training, because the families who most need these programmes are the ones who stop attending. Staying in the room is treated there as a problem worth its own trial, not as something to take for granted. That is the case for spending a moment on rapport before spending an hour on technique.
Chacko A, Wymbs BT, Chimiklis A, Wymbs FA, Pelham WE. (2012). Evaluating a comprehensive strategy to improve engagement to group-based behavioral parent training for high-risk families of children with ADHD.. Journal of abnormal child psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
People keep being honest with whoever did not flinch the first time.
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
Choose one person and tell them you will send the finished thing by a set time. Not a conversation about how it is going, just the file, the photo, or the word done.
Use a timer you can see rather than one you have to read. A dial where the coloured part shrinks tells you how much is left at a glance, with no arithmetic in the way.
Make handed-in homework one of the tracked targets. It is the thing that goes wrong most and the thing worth most when it goes right.