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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
If you notice yourself handing over the fourth tool for the same problem, stop and ask a different kind of question. What happened the last time they tried it? What was going on in the ten minutes before? Who else was in the house? Tactics are cheap, and the block is usually specific to this person and this week. It is slower work and it is the work.
'God knows and you do not' (Quran 2:216). A steadying line for the moment when you have run out of ideas and have to ask instead of supply.
البقرة
كُتِبَ عَلَيۡكُمُ ٱلۡقِتَالُ وَهُوَ كُرۡهࣱ لَّكُمۡۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تَكۡرَهُواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَهُوَ خَيۡرࣱ لَّكُمۡۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تُحِبُّواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَهُوَ شَرࣱّ لَّكُمۡۚ وَٱللَّهُ يَعۡلَمُ وَأَنتُمۡ لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ
Fighting is ordained for you, though you dislike it. You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you: God knows and you do not.’
Qur’an 2:216read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
It helps to know where the research has and has not looked. A scientometric analysis of more than twenty eight thousand ADHD publications found the field dominated by treatment and risk factor studies. That maps the literature rather than telling you what to do in the room, and it is a fair reminder that the everyday question of why a good strategy is not landing has far less evidence behind it than the strategies themselves.
Cortese S, Sabé M, Chen C, Perroud N, Solmi M. (2022). Half a century of research on Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A scientometric study.. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Adding tools to a blocked system just adds tools, and the block stays where it was.
Ask twice. First, who in the family has an actual diagnosis. Then, who do you look back on now and wonder about. The second question nearly always brings more than the first.
When you need a date, hand people events rather than months. Was that before or after the holiday? Same year as the move?
When a bright, talkative autistic child arrives looking mainly behavioural, look underneath for a coordination or reading difficulty. Once the first label is in place, whatever comes after tends to get filed under it and never assessed on its own.