Practices

Give the later self a name and be a bit silly about it. Is Thursday you going to be furious with Monday you again? Is Thursday you always the one clearing up?

This lands with teenagers and with anyone bristling at being told what to do, because it is funny and the joke is what does the work. Turning the…

The planning part of the brain is the last to finish growing, and it keeps developing well into the twenties. Eighteen is a legal age rather than a developmental one.

This is worth saying plainly in a family where someone is being asked why they cannot just be responsible now. Nobody expects a fourteen year old to…

With attention difficulties the organising side often runs a few years behind the birthday. A nineteen year old may be running life more like a sixteen year old, and that is a lag rather than a verdict.

Set expectations against where someone actually is instead of what year they were born in. That way the support that felt normal at school does not…

If a year out is coming, call it a bridge rather than a gap. A gap is a hole in a record. A bridge is going somewhere.

That word will be repeated at every family gathering for twelve months, so it is worth choosing carefully. A bridge year has a direction and an end,…

Praise the sitting down at the desk, not only the finished piece. If recognition only shows up when something is completed, most weeks it never shows up at all.

Say what you actually saw, and say it close to the moment: you sat down twice today when you clearly did not want to. Small rewards work too, as long…

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.…

Writing things down is not evidence that your memory has failed. It is what happens once there is more in your life than one head can hold.

Most people who refuse a system are protecting something: the sense of being capable, of not being the sort of person who needs help with this. Argue…

Put the uncertainty at the front. Not Thursday, possibly Friday, most likely Monday is worth far more to the other person than a confident yes you cannot keep.

It feels worse to say, which is why people avoid it. But a hedge given early costs you nothing, while a promise broken later costs twice: the thing…

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…

Before anything else, check the child actually knows what the homework is. Most homework goes missing at that first step, not at the effort step.

It might be on the board, on the school portal or in the planner with the teacher having glanced at it, and any of those is fine as long as it can be…

Print the agreement out and stick it up where the child will see it. In a drawer it may as well not exist.

The moment that matters is the one where the console is right there and the maths is not started, and nothing you agreed a fortnight ago is in the…

A wave across the road, a joke with the man in the shop, asking someone how they are and meaning it. These unplanned seconds count for more than they look like they should.

They are also the easiest place to start when arranging a proper meet up feels like too much. Almost nothing is at stake in a greeting, so a fear of…

Ask a friend to be the person who knows. Send them a line on the days you went, with no reply needed. Being known about today is what does the work.

It only helps if you set it up yourself and say exactly what you want, otherwise it slips into being nagged. Keep it small and specific: one line,…

Some of what looks like muddle is the system's fault. Our tenth month is named for eight, because two months were added later and nobody renamed the rest.

Worth saying to anyone who feels stupid about dates and forms. A calendar whose numbers are out of step, a tax year starting in April, forms asking…

Long acting stimulants are the usual starting point for a plain reason: they cover the most hours and they remove the lunchtime dose, which is the dose ADHD is most likely to swallow whole.

Remembering a tablet in the middle of a busy day is itself an executive task, so asking for it is asking the person to do the thing they came for…

When someone has missed the deadline again, the talk about how they always do this changes nothing except how they feel. If you want a different Friday, the conversation belongs on Monday, and it is about the plan rather than the person.

This is a hard one, because the frustration is real and often fair. But the lecture lands on a system that was never the failure point, and it adds…

Instead of one warning, give several: half an hour, fifteen minutes, five, one. The child then has time to arrive at the ending rather than having it dropped on them.

A single warning asks a child to track the gap on their own, which is the thing they cannot do. A ladder of prompts turns a stretch of time into a…

Before you offer anyone the upside of their ADHD, say the hard part out loud first. One patient's answer to being told it was a gift was to ask where he could return it.

A reframe offered too early does not sound hopeful, it sounds like you were not listening. Name the cost in specifics, the job that went, the…

Rather than arguing that someone ought to get organised, ask one question. Would your life be better if fewer things slipped, fewer people were annoyed with you, and you spent less of the day worrying about what you had forgotten?

The answer is nearly always yes, and it lands differently when the person says it instead of hearing it. Keep the list concrete and drawn from their…

A child who cannot yet catch their own drifting needs somebody close enough to catch it for them. Where they sit does a lot of that work quietly.

From nearby a teacher sees attention go before the work is lost, and can bring the child back without stopping the lesson for everyone. Proximity…