Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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55 practices

Exercise, food and other supports Any ordinary day Clear all

How long you have

A minute 9 Five minutes 35 Twenty minutes 8 Longer 3

Who it is written for

A practitioner 55 Someone I care about 52 Me 41

Where you are right now

Coping, mostly 40 Getting ready for something 12 Struggling right now 3

On your own, or with someone

On my own 40 Involves someone else 13 Both of us together 2

Theme · Exercise, food and other supports

Medication and how it works 148Systems for daily life 90 Your nervous system 87 Get started 69 Getting assessed and diagnosed 64 What anger actually is 58 Your sense of time 58 Moving your body 56 Exercise, food and other supports 55 Food, caffeine and fuel 53 The moment before you snap 49 What ADHD actually is 48 Treatment and medication 48 Bringing the future closer 46 Choosing your response 45 Screens and attention 44 Touch and bodywork 38 Equanimity and perspective 37 Grounding and settling 34 When everything feels flat 34 Structure and routine 33 Feelings and focus 32 Reading, numbers and learning differences 31 The fear underneath anger 31 Practising under provocation 30 Growing empathy 29 What worry does 26 Cool the body first 25 Shame and stigma 25 Being seen and judged 24 The cost of avoiding 24 Breathing 24 Making it stick 24 Treatment and medication 23 Remembering to do it 20 Knowing your partner 20 When you use something to cope 19 Breaking the worry loop 16 Feeling from the inside 16 Facing it a step at a time 16 Shared spiritual life 16 What you are actually defending 14 Fondness and admiration 14 Righteous anger and perfectionism 13 Emotions as signals 13 Obsessions and compulsions 13 Answering bids 12 Tolerate distress 12 Staying regulated in conflict 11 Listening and understanding 10 Gratitude 9 Posture and how you carry yourself 9 Use your strengths 8 Self-compassion 8 Affection and touch 7 Shame 7 Rituals of connection 7 When anger turns to harm 6 Question the thought 6 Anger, alcohol and the body 6 Rebuilding trust 5 Panic and the body 3 Rest and pacing 3 Your worth is not conditional 3 Repair after rupture 3 Living with uncertainty 3 When you go numb 3 Notice the pattern and flex 3 Act on your values 2 Get it out of your head 2 Find meaning 2 Face it gently 2 Work with your brain 2 Keep the bond 2 Meaning after harm 2 Listen to the body 1 Safety and grounding 1 Your window of tolerance 1 Care for yourself in loss 1

When · Any ordinary day

Any ordinary day 55 Under stress 3 Coming and going 3

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…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 73:20

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…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 10:67

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…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:191

One senior researcher in this field is approached by ADHD app startups roughly once a month and no longer takes part, on the view that the companies are not seriously trying to build something that works.

You do not have to share his judgement to borrow the question. Before paying for a digital product, ask who tested it, whether those testers were…

Five minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 28:26

Headsets have become cheap enough to sit in an ordinary consulting room, and the use with the best backing is graded exposure. You can set the intensity exactly and repeat it as often as the person needs.

The value is in the control. A feared situation can be dialled up in small steps, run again the moment it stops being frightening, and ended without…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 73:20

If you are thinking about a weighted blanket or vest for a child, let an occupational therapist set the weight. It is a specific number for a specific body, not something to guess at in a shop.

The pull to order one straight away is understandable, especially after months of bad nights. What an OT does is match the weight to the child's size…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 55:8

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…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:185

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…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:286

If you are going to take supplements, it is worth paying a small subscription to a service that assays what is actually in them. ConsumerLab is one, at roughly sixty dollars a year.

The thing to check about any such service is who funds it, because a tester paid by manufacturers is a marketing department with a laboratory…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:247

Ask for photographs of every bottle rather than a list from memory, then pass that list to the prescriber. Recall is patchy about names and hopeless about doses.

Intake forms catch some of it and a photo of the shelf catches the rest, including the two things nobody mentions because they seem too minor to…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 6:141

When omega levels are low, everything about ADHD tends to get louder: attention, mood swings, holding things in mind. Low omega does not cause ADHD, but it can be sitting on top of it.

Think of it as one more layer to lift off rather than the thing underneath. Specialist labs can measure levels if it seems worth checking, and…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 23:21

One woman's ADHD symptoms climbed and her thinking slowed as each B12 injection wore off, then settled again after the next one. The deficiency came down one side of her family and the ADHD down the other.

The two lived in the same person without either causing the other. What made it findable was the timing, because difficulties that follow a cycle are…

Twenty minutesExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 23:21

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…

LongerExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:168

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…

LongerExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 22:78

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…

LongerExercise, food and other supportsMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:153

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