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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
There is a cost beyond the wasted afternoons. Something unpleasant that was introduced as treatment teaches a child what treatment feels like, and the next thing offered, including the things that would genuinely help, arrives against that memory. Where movement is the aim, choose movement a child would pick for themselves.
Go at a moderate pace (Quran 31:19). It is said of how a person moves through the world, and being whirled about in a chair is some distance from it.
لقمان
وَٱقۡصِدۡ فِي مَشۡيِكَ وَٱغۡضُضۡ مِن صَوۡتِكَۚ إِنَّ أَنكَرَ ٱلۡأَصۡوَٰتِ لَصَوۡتُ ٱلۡحَمِيرِ
Go at a moderate pace and lower your voice, for the ugliest of all voices is the braying of asses.’
Qur’an 31:19read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Movement children take part in willingly has at least some support behind it. A small feasibility trial ran a ten week after school exercise programme for children with ADHD or disruptive behaviour and found improvement on cognitive and behavioural measures against a matched sedentary programme. Small and preliminary, and pointing somewhere far pleasanter.
Bustamante EE, Davis CL, Frazier SL, Rusch D, Fogg LF, Atkins MS, Marquez DX. (2016). Randomized Controlled Trial of Exercise for ADHD and Disruptive Behavior Disorders.. Medicine and science in sports and exercise doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A child who has learned that help feels horrible will refuse the help that works.
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.
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.
Try swapping the word picky for particular. A fair number of people with ADHD have more densely packed taste buds, so the bitterness in a sprout arrives at full volume.