Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
They were written by teachers who had never heard of ADHD, about children nobody was going to assess, and that is exactly what makes them worth having. Nobody was remembering backwards or shaping the story around a label. Where a family still has them, they are often the most convincing pages in the file, for you and for the person sitting with you.
'who taught man what he did not know' (Quran 96:5). Coming across a page that explains your own childhood is a small version of being taught something about yourself.
العلق
عَلَّمَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنَ مَا لَمۡ يَعۡلَمۡ
who taught man what he did not know
Qur’an 96:5read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Useful as they are, treat their absence as neutral. A population birth cohort found that many impaired young adults with ADHD symptoms had no documented childhood onset disorder, which questions the assumption that a valid diagnosis always needs clear childhood evidence. Old reports strengthen a case when they exist. Empty hands do not weaken one.
Caye A, Rocha TB, Anselmi L, Murray J, Menezes AM, Barros FC, Gonçalves H, Wehrmeister F, Jensen CM, Steinhausen HC, Swanson JM, Kieling C, Rohde LA. (2016). Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Trajectories From Childhood to Young Adulthood: Evidence From a Birth Cohort Supporting a Late-Onset Syndrome.. JAMA psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A note written at the time cannot be bent by what anyone believes now.
Some of these reports are painful to read, so ask before you hand them over and stay in the room while the person reads.
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.
A distracted person can be brought back with a nudge. Someone who has gone elsewhere cannot, and the difference shows itself in a couple of seconds.
How an outburst ends tells you more than how it starts. Give an ADHD storm some room and it often burns itself out. The rage that runs for an hour with the lights out behind the eyes is a different animal, and so is the child who genuinely does not mind what you take away.