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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Walk them through it when nothing is happening. This is where it is, this is what you can do there, this is how you come back. Let the whole class know it exists, so that using it is not a public label. Then when the moment comes all you need is one or two familiar words, and there is nothing to explain and nothing to argue about.
'Lord, I take refuge with You from the goadings of the evil ones' (Quran 23:97). A form of words learned beforehand is what you can reach for when the moment is already loud.
المؤمنون
وَقُل رَّبِّ أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنۡ هَمَزَٰتِ ٱلشَّيَٰطِينِ
and say, ‘Lord, I take refuge with You from the goadings of the evil ones
Qur’an 23:97read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
The original feasibility study of an eight week mindfulness training in 24 adults and 8 adolescents with ADHD opened this field, teaching regulation skills over weeks, ahead of the moments they would be needed. It had no control group, which is worth saying plainly. The shape of the thing, taught in the calm and used later, is the part that carries over here.
Zylowska L, Ackerman DL, Yang MH, Futrell JL, Horton NL, Hale TS, Pataki C, Smalley SL. (2008). Mindfulness meditation training in adults and adolescents with ADHD: a feasibility study.. Journal of attention disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A familiar routine can be reached for under pressure, and a brand new instruction cannot.
The whole value of a calming corner is that the child can take themselves there. An adult may suggest it, but if it is only ever ordered, what gets learned is obedience rather than self-regulation.
Halfway up the argument, ask yourself one question. What do I want here, and who am I trying to be. Winning the sentence is rarely worth what it costs by bedtime.
Partners of people with ADHD tend not to name the lateness or the lost keys as the real injury. It is the size of the reactions. That is where the damage collects.