Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Treatment and medication
In practice it looks small and ordinary. You set up a play date, you stay within earshot, you give a nudge before things tip over, and afterwards you say something warm about the part that went well. None of that is a lesson. It is a parent standing where the difficulty happens, which is the one place a child can use the help.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Each person has guardian angels before him and behind, watching over him by God's command (Quran 13:11). Being watched over closely is not surveillance. For a child learning how to be with others, it is the whole of the help.
الرعد
لَهُۥ مُعَقِّبَٰتࣱ مِّنۢ بَيۡنِ يَدَيۡهِ وَمِنۡ خَلۡفِهِۦ يَحۡفَظُونَهُۥ مِنۡ أَمۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوۡمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمۡۗ وَإِذَآ أَرَادَ ٱللَّهُ بِقَوۡمࣲ سُوٓءࣰ ا فَلَا مَرَدَّ لَهُۥۚ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِۦ مِن وَالٍ
each person has guardian angels before him and behind, watching over him by God’s command. God does not change the condition of a people [for the worse] unless they change what is in themselves, but if He wills harm on a people, no one can ward it off–– apart from Him, they have no protector
Qur’an 13:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analytic review of nine randomised and three uncontrolled trials asked whether gains from psychosocial treatment in ADHD still hold at longer follow up. Those trials were with adults rather than children on play dates, so it is not a test of parent coaching. It is the best answer this bank holds to the fair question of whether psychological help lasts once it stops.
López-Pinar C, Martínez-Sanchís S, Carbonell-Vayá E, Fenollar-Cortés J, Sánchez-Meca J. (2018). Long-Term Efficacy of Psychosocial Treatments for Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Meta-Analytic Review.. Frontiers in psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Coaching given while the child is with friends arrives at the moment the skill is actually needed.
When a child with ADHD and a parent get stuck in daily rows, the rows themselves start doing damage. Getting the ADHD properly managed early takes some heat out of those exchanges before defiance settles in as a habit.
Before anything else, the people around the child need to understand what ADHD actually is. Everything else works better once that has happened.
Better usually means smaller, rarer, or shorter. Pick something you can count, like losing your keys twice a week instead of every day.