Practices

Ask which step they are willing to try, and then go with their answer. A smaller step they chose themselves tends to get attempted, and a bigger one you chose for them often does not.

In practice this means holding the ladder loosely. You keep the shape of it, they pick the rung, and if they pick lower than you hoped you take the…

A ladder worth climbing has six things: real steps, built with you rather than for you, in your own words, a first rung that is genuinely easy, your hand on the pace throughout, and practice often enough to add up.

Most ladders come apart for dull reasons. The bottom rung was somebody else's idea of easy. The wording came out of a manual. Nobody said you were…

Years of avoiding people leave real gaps, not only fear. How to start small talk, how to join a group already talking, how to get out of a conversation. Those can be taught, and being taught them is not an insult.

Sending someone into a peer group without the ordinary moves risks a genuinely bad afternoon, which then teaches exactly the wrong lesson. Practise…

Nobody puts a child who cannot swim into the shallow end and calls it teaching. Before anyone goes near the thing they dread, they need something to do with their body and their head when the fear arrives.

It takes only one overwhelming attempt to teach the opposite of what was intended: that it really was too much, and that the adults will push anyway.…

Before inviting anyone to turn attention to their body, ask first. How do you feel about trying this now, and would you like to?

The asking is part of the practice, not the preamble to it. Someone whose body was once not theirs to control needs the choice handed back in small…

When someone is distressed, moving too fast to settle them can land as a message that their distress is not welcome here. Let them set the speed.

Offering a breath, a blanket, a change of subject: all of it can help, and all of it can arrive as a shutting down if it comes before the person has…

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…

If rating a feeling out of ten means nothing to you, use something that does. Colour in bubbles, point at a picture, hold your hands apart to show how big it is today.

This began as an adaptation for children, swapping the numbered anxiety ladder for bubbles to colour in, and it is just as useful for anyone who goes…

Being far apart is not the same as being out of touch. What usually stops contact is the question of who starts it, not the miles.

Distance turns into disconnection when both people wait for the other one. It helps to fix a when rather than promising to speak soon. The same…

Step in while a child is only starting to wind up, and offer something calming rather than a correction. Slow breathing, counting, a soft toy, a quiet corner for a few minutes.

Three to ten minutes in a set place is plenty. It works best when the offer is warm and matter of fact, one sentence, no lecture about what they did.…

The whole value of a calming corner is that the child can take themselves there. An adult may suggest it, but if it is only ever ordered, what gets learned is obedience rather than self-regulation.

Make it clearly available rather than assigned. They go, they take their few minutes, they come back with a short hello and a nod at whatever they…

Instead of sending a child out to sit and stew, send them to a side table for three very easy worksheets, then straight back to whatever everyone else is doing.

It takes them out of whatever was rewarding about the behaviour without leaving them with nothing to do and an audience to play to. Keep the work…

Time with people is not the nice extra you get to once the real work is done. Put it alongside sleep, medication and exercise rather than underneath them.

It helps to treat it like any other part of a plan, with something specific in the week rather than a general intention to be more social. One…

Belonging to the group does nothing. Going does. Having a friend does nothing either, unless you see them.

So count the actual events. How many times this week did you sit with someone, not message them. A number you can check beats a resolution to be more…

When someone has gone flat, the question is not what they ought to be doing. It is what still has any life in it for them, however small or unimpressive, and then how to get more of that.

Activities handed out from the outside do not lift much. Someone who brightens talking about their car, or a cousin, or a game has just given you the…

ADHD rarely turns up on its own. If anxiety or low mood is in the room as well, it needs treating in its own right, and that includes when it is the other partner who is struggling.

This is the part that gets missed in couples. One person becomes the identified patient and everybody works on them, while the other one's untreated…

Explain the calming corner on a quiet Tuesday, not in the middle of a meltdown. New instructions do not go in once a child is already rising.

Walk them through it when nothing is happening. This is where it is, this is what you can do there, this is how you come back. Let the whole class…

Whatever the correction is, teach it before you need it. A routine the child already knows can be started with two words instead of a negotiation in front of everybody.

Show them the table, the worksheets, what happens when they finish, and let them try it once while nothing is wrong. After that the instruction is…

If you run a group for people with ADHD, keep it to about five or six, or bring in a second facilitator. Past that you spend the session keeping order instead of doing the work.

The limit is not really about behaviour. It is about how many people one person can genuinely track while also holding the thread of the session.…

Counter contempt by building a steady culture of appreciation: express thanks, fondness, and respect often.

Contempt grows where appreciation is missing. Regular, sincere praise is the long-term antidote.