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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
Children with ADHD may use more screens, and screens may not be the reason. The same shape turns up with sugar, with additives, with organic food and with almost everything else that gets blamed. There is usually a third thing sitting behind both, or the arrow runs the other way, and the difference between them is not something you can see by looking. Ask what would have to be true for the claim to be causal, then ask whether anyone has actually tested that.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true (Quran 17:36). Asking how somebody knows a thing is part of taking it seriously.
الإسراء
وَلَا تَقۡفُ مَا لَيۡسَ لَكَ بِهِۦ عِلۡمٌۚ إِنَّ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡبَصَرَ وَٱلۡفُؤَادَ كُلُّ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ كَانَ عَنۡهُ مَسۡـُٔولࣰ ا
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these
Qur’an 17:36read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Reports that children with ADHD tend to have lower blood levels of certain nutrients prompted a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled trial of vitamin D and magnesium in 66 children. That sequence is exactly the right one, since the observed difference is only a starting point and the trial is what tests it. The trial was small, so it settles less than the design suggests, but the logic of moving from an association to a test is the part worth copying.
Hemamy M, Pahlavani N, Amanollahi A, Islam SMS, McVicar J, Askari G, Malekahmadi M. (2021). The effect of vitamin D and magnesium supplementation on the mental health status of attention-deficit hyperactive children: a randomized controlled trial.. BMC pediatrics doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Two things can move together because one causes the other, because something else causes both, or because of chance, and only a proper test can tell you which.
The warning about group social skills work is about loud, disruptive children. A quiet, anxious child who simply has not had much practice with other children is a different case, and a gentle group may be exactly right.
The stack goes: understand it, medicate where that is right, change what the adults do, change what the day asks, and keep arguing the child's corner. Each layer does a job the others cannot.
Think of it the way you would think about diabetes. Something to manage with several things at once, most days, for as long as it is there.