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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
This is worth saying gently to teachers and to parents who feel that grades ought to be motivation enough. For this child they are not, and no amount of caring more will bridge ten weeks. Something small and daily, a note home, a tick chart, a two minute check in, does the work that the report card cannot.
A day or part of a day (Quran 18:19) was how long the sleepers thought they had been there. Distance in time is not felt accurately, which is why a distant reward barely registers.
الكهف
وَكَذَٰلِكَ بَعَثۡنَٰهُمۡ لِيَتَسَآءَلُواْ بَيۡنَهُمۡۚ قَالَ قَآئِلࣱ مِّنۡهُمۡ كَمۡ لَبِثۡتُمۡۖ قَالُواْ لَبِثۡنَا يَوۡمًا أَوۡ بَعۡضَ يَوۡمࣲۚ قَالُواْ رَبُّكُمۡ أَعۡلَمُ بِمَا لَبِثۡتُمۡ فَٱبۡعَثُوٓاْ أَحَدَكُم بِوَرِقِكُمۡ هَٰذِهِۦٓ إِلَى ٱلۡمَدِينَةِ فَلۡيَنظُرۡ أَيُّهَآ أَزۡكَىٰ طَعَامࣰ ا فَلۡيَأۡتِكُم بِرِزۡقࣲ مِّنۡهُ وَلۡيَتَلَطَّفۡ وَلَا يُشۡعِرَنَّ بِكُمۡ أَحَدًا
In time We woke them, and they began to question one another. One of them asked, ‘How long have you been here?’ and [some] answered, ‘A day or part of a day,’ but then [others] said, ‘Your Lord knows best how long you have been here. One of you go to the city with your silver coins, find out where the best food is there, and bring some back. But be careful not to let anyone know about you
Qur’an 18:19read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of 52 effect sizes across 28 papers examined how children with ADHD handle delayed rewards compared with other children, its main question being whether boys and girls differ. The wider literature it draws on rests on the point that waiting for a distant reward is harder for these children. Read it as background rather than as a study of school reporting.
Doidge JL, Flora DB, Toplak ME. (2021). A Meta-Analytic Review of Sex Differences on Delay of Gratification and Temporal Discounting Tasks in ADHD and Typically Developing Samples.. Journal of attention disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Feedback only steers behaviour if it arrives close enough to the behaviour to be connected to it.
If you will not look at clocks, let something tell you instead. A watch or phone that buzzes every fifteen minutes, or on the hour, rebuilds a rough sense of how long you have been at this.
A clock only counts if you can see it without doing anything. Behind you, in a pocket, behind a lock screen: that is not a clock, that is an errand.
Reading the time off a clock does nothing on its own. The useful bit is the question straight after it: where was I meant to be by now, and how much is left.