Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
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.
Effort is a thing that runs down through a day, so the demanding job goes where there is most of it left. Teenagers really do wake up later, and fighting that costs you a whole morning for nothing. What matters is that the good stuff sits on the far side of the work rather than in front of it, where it will quietly swallow the day.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Store all that you reap, left in the ear, apart from the little you eat (Quran 12:47). The gathering and the keeping come first, and what is enjoyed comes out of what has already been done.
قَالَ تَزۡرَعُونَ سَبۡعَ سِنِينَ دَأَبࣰ ا فَمَا حَصَدتُّمۡ فَذَرُوهُ فِي سُنۢبُلِهِۦٓ إِلَّا قَلِيلࣰ ا مِّمَّا تَأۡكُلُونَ
then I can return to the people to inform them.’ Joseph said, ‘You will sow for seven consecutive years as usual. Store all that you reap, left in the ear, apart from the little you eat
Qur’an 12:47read 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 classified behavioural parent training, behavioural classroom management and behavioural peer interventions as the best-supported psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents with ADHD. Arrangements of this kind, where an adult sets the order of the day and holds it, are the family of approaches that evidence sits behind. The review classifies whole approaches, so it says nothing about which hour of the morning to start.
Steven W. Evans; Julie Sarno Owens; Nóra Bunford (2013). Evidence-Based Psychosocial Treatments for Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Something you want makes a much better reward at the end than a thing to be dragged away from at the start.
When not to
If the work itself has become a daily battle with real distress, look first at whether it is pitched at the right level rather than tightening the rule.
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
A behaviour agreement needs six things in it: the goal, exactly what the child does, what they earn, what happens if they do not, signatures from everyone, and an adult who sticks to it.
Some things can only be done between nine and five, and those are the ones that quietly fail. Ring the bank, chase the appointment, sort the form: give those a time before anything else.
Put small obstacles between the urge and the doing. One browser used only for work, tempting apps buried three folders down, notifications off for anything that is not an actual person you love.