Loading practices
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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Exercise, food and other supports
A scratchy seam or a stiff tag is a small thing that keeps announcing itself all day, and every announcement takes a piece of attention with it. Moulded earplugs made for children do the same job for noise. Specialist retailers, suppliers of independent living aids and small makers online cover most of what you need. It feels too ordinary to count as an intervention, which is probably why it gets skipped.
dress well whenever you are at worship (Quran 7:31). Clothing is treated there as something that matters, so attending to how it sits on a child is not a fuss.
الأعراف
۞يَٰبَنِيٓ ءَادَمَ خُذُواْ زِينَتَكُمۡ عِندَ كُلِّ مَسۡجِدࣲ وَكُلُواْ وَٱشۡرَبُواْ وَلَا تُسۡرِفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُسۡرِفِينَ
Children of Adam, dress well whenever you are at worship, and eat and drink [as We have permitted] but do not be extravagant: God does not like extravagant people
Qur’an 7:31read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Changing the shape of a day is being tested properly now. A randomised trial of a lifestyle intervention for children with mental illness, including ADHD, addressed diet, activity, gaming and sleep together and looked at short and long term effects on symptoms and physical health. A bundle like that cannot tell you which piece did the work, and it does treat the ordinary environment as something worth changing.
van Tetering EMA, Muskens JB, Deenik J, Pillen S, Cahn W, von Rosenstiel I, Oomen M, Rommelse NN, Staal WG, Klip H. (2023). The short and long-term effects of a lifestyle intervention in children with mental illnesses: a randomized controlled trial (Movementss study).. BMC psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
An irritation that never stops takes attention every time it registers, so removing it hands that attention back.
Sixty two children took methylphenidate with either vitamin D or a placebo, and both groups improved. The two ADHD rating scales showed no difference between them, which leaves the positive headline resting on the clinician's judgement rather than on what parents reported.
If fish oil gives you those horrible repeats all afternoon, that is a fixable problem rather than a reason to stop. Keep the capsules in the freezer, ask about an enteric coated version, or try a flavoured liquid.
Protocols that spin a child in a chair or tip them backwards and forwards to train balance do not improve ADHD. What they mainly produce is a dizzy child.