Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
Teach the school's online system properly, once, and then treat it as something known. I do not know how to use it cannot stay true forever.
Sit down together and go through it: where assignments appear, how to see what is due, what to do when it will not load. Until that has happened, being stuck with it is a fair answer. Afterwards it stops being an explanation, and everyone is spared the weekly argument about whether the work was really there or not.
Qur’an and Sunnah
I will bring it to you in the twinkling of an eye (Quran 27:40). The one with the right knowledge makes short work of what would otherwise be impossible, which is what a properly learned system does for a child.
قَالَ ٱلَّذِي عِندَهُۥ عِلۡمࣱ مِّنَ ٱلۡكِتَٰبِ أَنَا۠ ءَاتِيكَ بِهِۦ قَبۡلَ أَن يَرۡتَدَّ إِلَيۡكَ طَرۡفُكَۚ فَلَمَّا رَءَاهُ مُسۡتَقِرًّا عِندَهُۥ قَالَ هَٰذَا مِن فَضۡلِ رَبِّي لِيَبۡلُوَنِيٓ ءَأَشۡكُرُ أَمۡ أَكۡفُرُۖ وَمَن شَكَرَ فَإِنَّمَا يَشۡكُرُ لِنَفۡسِهِۦۖ وَمَن كَفَرَ فَإِنَّ رَبِّي غَنِيࣱّ كَرِيمࣱ
but one of them who had some knowledge of the Scripture said, ‘I will bring it to you in the twinkling of an eye.’ When Solomon saw it set before him, he said, ‘This is a favour from my Lord, to test whether I am grateful or not: if anyone is grateful, it is for his own good, if anyone is ungrateful, then my Lord is self-sufficient and most generous.’
Qur’an 27:40read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review and meta-analysis of computer, mobile and wearable systems for reducing sitting time coded the behaviour change techniques those systems used, and any such system only does its work for somebody who can operate it. That is the argument for teaching the portal rather than assuming it. The review was about sedentary behaviour, so the step across to school software is an inference of mine and not a finding of theirs.
Stephenson A, McDonough SM, Murphy MH, Nugent CD, Mair JL. (2017). Using computer, mobile and wearable technology enhanced interventions to reduce sedentary behaviour: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
An unclosed gap in a system becomes the place everything escapes through.
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
Send the report between the adults, by email or through the school system. Do not make the child carry a piece of paper to four teachers and then home.
Not knowing how to do an ordinary thing, a bank transfer, a form, a phone call to book something, says nothing about your intelligence. It says nobody ever sat down and showed you.
Pick the place that will actually hold the person, not the one with the better name on the letterhead. Three years somewhere that fits beats one term somewhere that does not.