Practices

Some settings simply suit an attention difficulty better. Expectations set out minute by minute, consequences that arrive the same day, a visible ladder to climb: military life often fits for exactly those reasons.

The point carries well beyond the army. When you are helping someone choose work, ask what the day actually looks like rather than what the job is…

Stopping medication rises sharply in the early teenage years. If that is where you are, it helps to know this is the usual pattern rather than a sign that something has gone wrong with your child.

The pull is understandable: wanting to be in charge of your own body, hating being the one who is different, and a parent no longer standing over the…

Use a timer you can see rather than a warning you have to remember. A dial that shrinks, or a light that goes from green to red, does the work that five more minutes never quite does.

Time is not something everyone feels passing. Turning it into something you can look at moves the job from guessing to seeing, which is much easier.…

One minute of moving between tasks. Star jumps, a lap of the corridor, anything that gets the blood going before you sit down to the next thing.

Classrooms that do this report smoother changeovers and better recall of whatever was just taught. The same trick works at a desk: end one job, move…

Do not stop dead. Give the end of anything energetic a few minutes of winding down, so the change of gear is a routine rather than a demand.

Stopping is a transition, and transitions are where things fall apart for a lot of people. A short unwinding phase, the same one every time, takes…

Move just before the difficult task, not after it as a reward. Five minutes of skipping, stairs or running on the spot, then sit down to the thing.

The window straight after moving is when focus is at its best, so that is the bit worth spending on whatever you have been dreading. For a child,…

One man with ADHD described the goal as no longer suffering from it, only having it. The diagnosis had not changed. What it cost him had.

Half of that shift comes from removing particular sources of pain: the job that was never going to work, the arrangement at home that left everything…

Most children with ADHD grow into adults with ADHD. Some of it settles as the brain finishes developing into your late twenties, and adult life gives you more say over how your days are arranged, but the underlying difficulty tends to stay.

This is worth knowing because much of the improvement people do get comes from arranging things to suit themselves: the job that fits, the hours that…

Instead of one warning, give several: half an hour, fifteen minutes, five, one. The child then has time to arrive at the ending rather than having it dropped on them.

A single warning asks a child to track the gap on their own, which is the thing they cannot do. A ladder of prompts turns a stretch of time into a…

Moving between lessons is where things fall apart, so plan the move out loud before it happens. What to bring, where to go, and who will be waiting.

Before the child leaves maths, walk them through what comes with them and tell them to check in with the next teacher on arrival. That teacher greets…

The best ending is often that therapy stops and the practices carry on. People finish their sessions and keep the yoga, the bodywork, the acupressure, the sitting quietly.

It is worth building towards that from early on rather than at the end. If everything that settles you happens in one room with one person, then…

ADHD does not usually vanish at eighteen. The visible fidgeting often settles while the inattention stays, and the restlessness moves inwards where nobody can see it.

A teenager who has stopped bouncing off the walls can look much improved at exactly the point their workload has quadrupled, which is a poor moment…

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 you swallow it all day at work and it comes out at home, home is not where the problem is. It is just the safest place to put it down.

Anger lands where retaliation costs least, which usually means on the people who will forgive you. Two things help more than trying to be calmer at…

The years you spent angry are not written off. The drive that wrecked things is the same drive available now for putting things right.

This is not a way of saying the damage was worth it. It is about what is still in your hands. People who have hurt others through their temper often…

A skill that lives in your own body and your own phone stays with you after the appointments stop. That is worth choosing for.

Plenty of what helps during treatment ends when the relationship does. This does not. People often say afterwards that the breathing thing was the…

Getting ill the week after the exams, the deadline or the funeral is not bad luck. It is the pattern.

You hold together through the push, and the moment it stops you are in bed with something. Often it was already brewing while you were still going.…