Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
It runs the other way as well. Among children referred for dyslexia, a sizeable minority also have ADHD and many have coordination difficulties too. Whatever is written on the referral, treat it as one part of the picture.
Where the reading difficulty is severe, motor involvement is more likely to be there alongside it, which is why the first look should be wider than the letter that brought them. Ask about all three areas at intake, whichever door the family came through. It takes a few minutes and it stops a child being treated only for the thing somebody happened to name.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Believers, if a troublemaker brings you news, check it first' (Quran 49:6). Nobody in this scene is a troublemaker, and the habit still applies: check what arrives before you build on it.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِن جَآءَكُمۡ فَاسِقُۢ بِنَبَإࣲ فَتَبَيَّنُوٓاْ أَن تُصِيبُواْ قَوۡمَۢا بِجَهَٰلَةࣲ فَتُصۡبِحُواْ عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلۡتُمۡ نَٰدِمِينَ
Believers, if a troublemaker brings you news, check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly and later regret what you have done
Qur’an 49:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Under-recording is well described in this field. A review of systematic reviews put ADHD prevalence in children at roughly two to seven per cent, with a further five per cent sitting just below the diagnostic threshold, and noted that recorded diagnoses fall well short of that. It concerns ADHD in the community rather than children referred with dyslexia, so it supports a wide first look without settling any particular overlap figure.
Sayal K, Prasad V, Daley D, Ford T, Coghill D. (2018). ADHD in children and young people: prevalence, care pathways, and service provision.. The lancet. Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Whoever wrote the referral could only name what they noticed, and what they noticed depends on what they know.
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
'I am disorganised' cannot be treated. 'The post piles up on the hall table until something ends up with a debt collector' can. Spend the time getting the problem down to something that specific.
When something did not get done, find out which half broke. Did they not know what to do or when? Or was the plan fine, and the moment for doing it came and went?
Not every bout of eating too much belongs to an eating disorder. Ask whether how the body looks is part of it, because that is where the two paths separate.