Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
Score each target from one to five rather than done or not done, and have the teacher say a word about it and initial the sheet before the child leaves the room.
Half the work finished earns a three. That matters enormously for a child whose usual score would be nothing at all, because a pass or fail sheet throws away every bit of progress on the way up. The word said at the desk is doing its own job too, since it arrives hours before anything that happens at home.
Qur’an and Sunnah
you will progress from stage to stage (Quran 84:19). Moving in stages is how it is expected to go, so a scale that can show a stage is truer than a sheet that only says yes or no.
لَتَرۡكَبُنَّ طَبَقًا عَن طَبَقࣲ
you will progress from stage to stage
Qur’an 84:19read 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 fifteen years of research on adolescents with ADHD coded the studies against standard criteria and worked out effect sizes for behaviour therapy as well as medication, so approaches of this family have a measured track record rather than only clinical enthusiasm behind them. Effects for behavioural work in that age group are not dramatic. The review does not test this particular rating scheme.
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
Partial credit gives a child who is starting from a low place something to actually earn.
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
Light movement while you work is not stolen from the work. Rocking a foot, standing up, a slow circuit of the room on a call: for many people the concentration goes up rather than down.
Before you try to prioritise better, check whether there is any order in there at all. Plenty of people who feel stuck cannot say which of their jobs is genuinely required and which is merely wanted.
Put the schoolwork early in the day and let the screens come after it. For a teenager early means later than you would like, but the order stays the same.