Practices

When a young person is struggling to launch into adult life, it is usually two things at once: the practical scaffolding, and the social side. Work on one only and the other tends to pull it down.

Calendars, laundry and deadlines are the visible half. The harder half is friendship, saying no, asking for something, being alone in a room full of…

If you have been the one holding someone's schedule, meals and reminders together, do not put all of it down on the day they leave. Pass it over a piece at a time, each with a date on it.

Write out what you are actually doing for them: waking, appointments, repeat prescriptions, food, deadlines, forms. Most families are surprised by…

The next step has to be theirs. A job that looks like nothing to you might be the first thing in two years they chose without being pushed, and that is exactly why it holds.

Parents tend to want the step that recovers the lost ground. The young person needs the step they can actually take on Monday. Shifts in a shop, one…

When someone has shut down, pressure to get moving usually pushes them further in. Safety first and activity afterwards, even when the whole household is desperate for a sign of life.

Safety here is ordinary and physical. Food that turns up without being asked for. A room nobody is inspecting. Conversation that is not a progress…

Often the most useful thing a clinician does is not delivered by the clinician. It is delivered by the teacher, or the parent, after a conversation you had with them.

Taking that seriously changes how the hour gets spent, towards talking with the school, coaching the parents and designing the arrangement, and away…

The classroom is the strongest place to help and most clinicians cannot get into one. That is a reason to work well in the next best place, not a reason to give up.

ADHD sits in how a brain is built, and the work is on the executive skills themselves rather than on attitude or effort. Where the moment of…