Practices

People with ADHD tend to have lower omega-3 in their blood, and bringing low levels up has been linked with some improvement in symptoms. No convincing difference has shown up between DHA and EPA for this.

Omega-3 comes mostly from oily fish and krill, and fish is exactly what many people with texture sensitivity will not eat. Whether the shortfall…

In one trial, children were given omegas with a multivitamin, omegas alone, or neither, and after fifteen weeks everybody got both. The omega groups gained on set shifting and attention, and the children who started with nothing caught up once they crossed over.

Two features of that design are worth understanding. Everyone receiving the treatment eventually shows that the improvement follows the treatment…

Sixty two children took methylphenidate with either vitamin D or a placebo, and both groups improved. The two ADHD rating scales showed no difference between them, which leaves the positive headline resting on the clinician's judgement rather than on what parents reported.

That shape repeats all over this literature, so it is worth learning to spot. When a study reports an effect on one measure and not another, the…

People with ADHD are reported to run low on both tryptophan and homocysteine. Low homocysteine is a good thing to have, since it is the high version that damages hearts.

The reflex to correct any number under the reference range is worth resisting. Levels can be tested where there is a reason to test them. Eating a…

Omega supplementation for ADHD began with encouraging results, including a Swedish study where about a quarter of inattentive children seemed to improve. Blinded, placebo controlled work did not reproduce it, and a Cochrane meta-analysis found no effect.

The manufacturers themselves largely moved on to other conditions, which tells you something. None of this makes omegas worthless, and levels do run…

Cutting sugar does not improve ADHD, and nor does stripping out additives. Both have been tested repeatedly, including under conditions where nobody knew which child had eaten what.

The belief survives because parties are where children eat sweets, and parties are also loud, crowded and thrilling. The sugar takes the blame for…

Megavitamins, antioxidant products such as pycnogenol and assorted trace minerals have not beaten placebo for ADHD. They stay popular on the strength of a good story about how they ought to work.

The gap between a mechanism and an outcome is the thing worth teaching, because it will still be useful when the next product appears. Ask what…

Sensory integration training is popular and it does not help ADHD. Whatever value it has elsewhere, the capacity it works on is not the one that is impaired here.

What is impaired in ADHD is holding back a response and steering your own behaviour over time. Sensory modulation is a different thing altogether.…

Chiropractic neurologic organisation training, the kind involving manipulation of the skull, has no credible theory behind it for ADHD. The main harm is not the treatment itself but the months and the money that go into it.

Families meet this because it is marketed at them at the exact moment they are most willing to try anything. Naming it plainly, once, is usually…

A child can learn a self control routine beautifully in the therapy room and not use it once all week at school. Knowing the steps and performing them under pressure are two different skills.

This is why supports that sit in the moment tend to beat supports that sit in the mind. A prompt at the point of need, a changed seat, a rule the…

With EEG neurofeedback, the weaker the study, the better the results look. Six large trials using sham feedback, with parents and teachers kept unaware of who received what, found nothing beyond placebo.

That shrinking with rigour is itself the finding. Blinding matters especially here because the outcome is a rating made by adults who have watched…

Brain training makes you better at the game, and at things that resemble the game. It does not seem to reach the parts of life you bought it for.

Cogmed, the several hundred apps, the balance based programmes: they all hit the same wall when someone independent tests them with a proper control…

A weighted vest seems to do its work in roughly the first quarter of an hour. Twenty minutes did not beat fifteen, so longer is not more help.

Use it as a tool for a moment rather than a garment for the day: on before the piece of work that needs the most sitting still, off once that is…

With some sensory routines, the part doing the work may be a parent's steady hands and full attention rather than the technique itself. Worth knowing, because contact carries into the rest of the day and a protocol does not.

Views differ on this and the research has not sorted it out. What follows practically is that a family who cannot keep the exact routine going has…

When a test trips a child on something it was never meant to measure, change how they answer rather than what is asked. A spelling test spoken aloud is still a spelling test.

One girl saw letters as solid three dimensional shapes that would not sit together on a page, so writing them was a perceptual problem rather than a…

Food colouring is the one narrow exception in this area. Large studies suggest it may mildly wind up some very young children, so a trial removal in a preschooler is a reasonable thing to do.

Keep it in proportion though. This is a minor irritant in a subset of little children, nowhere near the sweeping dietary cause that was claimed…

The restrictive elimination diet has real methodological problems, and it is expensive and exhausting to run. If a family still wants to try it, they can, because unproven and dangerous are different words.

There is usually more to lose by forbidding it. A family who feels blocked either does it anyway without telling you or spends another year…

Play therapy and insight based psychotherapy do not treat ADHD. There is no buried, unexpressed feeling driving it that talking will let out.

The difficulty sits in executive control and how it develops, not in hidden conflict. That said, a child with ADHD can also be anxious, grieving or…

When something you thought in the moment actually worked, name it. A line you produced yourself is worth more than any phrase handed to you.

It might be as ordinary as noticing that this person does not know you, or that none of this will matter next week. Write it down while you still…

A belief you have carried since childhood will not fall over because you asked it a good question this afternoon. You are planting something, not winning an argument.

The temptation, once a thought starts to look flimsy, is to press harder, and pressing usually makes the belief dig in. Leave the question where it…