Practices

When a child with attention difficulties is also at war with every instruction, that pairing is worth taking to someone early rather than waiting to see whether it settles.

The two travel together often, and a minority of children follow a path from constant defiance into more serious trouble later. Every stage of that…

When a child truly does not mind losing the privilege, taking more away will not get you anywhere. That is the moment to change approach rather than raise the stakes, usually to a structured parent programme that works on the pattern between parent and child.

Star charts fail with these children because the reward was never the point of the behaviour. What helps is a proper course of parent management…

A clinician trained thoroughly in autism and ADHD may know almost nothing about coordination or reading difficulties, and can spend years working above foundations nobody ever checked. Ask yourself which of those categories your own training left out.

Go back over a handful of old cases rather than only reading about it. Where a child made less progress than you expected, ask what you never…

Assessing a child's thinking used to mean a referral, a waiting list and a report some months later. Brief cognitive tools an ordinary clinician can run have changed that, and the gap between noticing something and having a plan can now be a session rather than a season.

Learn one of them properly instead of dabbling in three. Know what it measures, what it does not, and how to talk about a score without turning it…

Processing speed is the stubborn one. It shifts a little with repeated, rhythmically paced practice and hardly at all with explanation, so say that to a family at the start rather than when they are disappointed.

Teaching a strategy will not make a slow processor quick, and telling a child to hurry up only makes the work more unpleasant. Graded practice with…

Assess, make a plan, do the work, and then keep measuring while you do it. Without that last part you have no way of knowing whether to push harder, change direction or stop.

Use more than one stream: your own measures, what parents notice at home, what school reports, and what the child says about it. Children will tell…

Give your spouse one genuine compliment today, specific enough that it could only be them.

Not nice shirt. The way you handled that call was so calm. Precise praise lands deepest.

When resentment rises today, name one thing you are grateful to your spouse for instead.

The mind can rehearse grievances or blessings. Choose the blessing, out loud if you can.

Thank them for one specific thing, today.

Not "thanks for everything." Pick one thing from the last two days and name it exactly: "Thank you for taking the bins out when I was on that call. I…

Thank them for something they do so routinely you had stopped noticing it.

The unremarked, dependable acts are exactly the ones that most deserve to be seen.

Say not just that you appreciated what they did, but what it saved you.

Naming the burden they spared you turns a thank-you into being truly seen.

Praise a quality of their character, not only something they did.

To be admired for who you are, not just what you produced, is a rare and steadying gift.

Send them a message today naming one thing you are grateful for, with no occasion.

Unprompted gratitude, arriving in the middle of an ordinary day, lands especially softly.

Catch your partner doing something right, and thank them for it, specifically, on the spot.

Notice the small good things and say thanks. Appreciation given often keeps goodwill flowing.

Build a habit of mind that scans your partner and your day for what to appreciate, not what to criticize.

What you look for grows. Train your eye toward their good and the relationship warms.

Four steps you can do in ten seconds in the middle of anything: stop, take one breath, look at what is actually happening, then carry on.

It fits inside an argument, a shopping queue, the second before you send a message you will regret. The value is not the breath itself, it is the…

Say it plainly whenever you teach anything: the way I am showing you this is not the way it has to be done. Change it until it works for you.

Anyone who has failed at the standard version of something several times will not try again unless they are told clearly that adapting it is allowed.…

Cold water on your face, especially around the eyes and cheeks, slows things down fast. Splash it, or hold a cold flannel there for half a minute.

This is one of the few things that works when you are too far gone to concentrate on anything. It asks for no skill and no privacy beyond a tap. Lean…

Cross your arms over your chest, hook your thumbs together, and tap your shoulders slowly, left then right. You set the pressure and the speed.

Twenty or thirty seconds is enough to feel something shift, and most people find the breath falls into step with the tapping on its own. Warmth in…

You do not need a diagnosis to be worth teaching this to. Something that takes seconds, costs nothing and travels with you is worth having before you need it.

Practise it on an ordinary day, sitting on the bus or waiting for the kettle, so your hands already know it when the day is not ordinary. That is…