Practices

When you explain ADHD to someone who does not have it, describe the effort rather than the outcome. Not that the form is unfinished, but what twenty minutes of trying to fill it in actually took out of you.

Most people around you are judging the visible result, because that is all they can see. One concrete picture of the inside of an ordinary task…

Telling parents that their child's self-management is running behind their age usually brings relief rather than alarm. It names something they had already noticed and had been blaming somebody for.

Left unexplained, parents fill the gap with a story, and the story is almost always that the child is choosing this or that they have parented badly.…

Set jobs at the level the child can manage now, then build up. A task pitched at their age that ends in a row every week mainly teaches them they are hopeless at chores.

Break it down further than feels necessary: not tidy your room, but put the clothes in the basket. Stay nearby for the first few goes, since being in…

Much of what matters most in an assessment never comes up unless you ask for it directly. Unplanned pregnancies, money trouble, sackings, near misses in the car: people very rarely volunteer these.

Put the questions on the form rather than waiting for a moment that feels right, since a questionnaire normalises them and takes the weight out of…

Some families make it a house rule that driving happens only on a day the medication has been taken. It works because it ties a privilege to safety rather than to obedience.

Set it with the young person rather than at them, and be clear it is about the road and not about whether you trust them. It also moves medication…

If a young person says they do not feel ready to drive, take that as information rather than something to talk them out of. Plenty of them know their own attention better than the adults around them do.

Waiting a year is not a failure, and there are other ways to get about. Do ask what sits behind it, because there is a difference between a sober…

If work keeps going wrong in the same way, ask for the expectations in writing before the next thing goes wrong. What is obvious to a manager is often not obvious to you, and a written version can be checked.

It might be a list of what counts as done, agreed deadlines, or the safety rules that are not negotiable. Adjustments are worth asking for too:…