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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Be specific about the first fortnight, since that is when it is worst and the payoff has not arrived yet. Someone who expected a small effort and met a large one concludes the tool is broken. Someone who expected the large one experiences the same fortnight as the price of the thing. And if they genuinely do not want to spend that effort at the moment, better to know it before you both invest in pretending otherwise.
'God willing, you will find me patient' (Quran 18:69). Moses says it before the difficulty begins rather than after, which is when a promise like that is any use.
الكهف
قَالَ سَتَجِدُنِيٓ إِن شَآءَ ٱللَّهُ صَابِرࣰ ا وَلَآ أَعۡصِي لَكَ أَمۡرࣰ ا
Moses said, ‘God willing, you will find me patient. I will not disobey you in any way.’
Qur’an 18:69read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Modest is the honest word for most added gains. A randomised trial of mindfulness based cognitive therapy in adults with ADHD found small reductions in core symptoms compared with usual care, offering something alongside standard treatment rather than instead of it. That was a specific therapy rather than the strategies you are teaching, and the size of the effect is the part that travels: real, worth having, not transforming.
Janssen L, Kan CC, Carpentier PJ, Sizoo B, Hepark S, Schellekens MPJ, Donders ART, Buitelaar JK, Speckens AEM. (2019). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy v. treatment as usual in adults with ADHD: a multicentre, single-blind, randomised controlled trial.. Psychological medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Effort you expected feels like the cost of something, and the same effort unexpected feels like proof it is not working.
Parents with one affected child often ask what they might do differently before the next one. Answer honestly: there are lists of suggestions in circulation, the evidence behind most of them is thin, and the question underneath is usually about blame.
Ask for the old school reports every time. Some people arrive with a folder of every one they ever had, and you cannot tell in advance which people those are.
Ask whether anyone kept the old school reports. The same lines turn up generation after generation: not working to potential, talks too much, never has the right books with him.