Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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154 practices

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The family history is not the warm up before the real assessment. Give it proper time and it will often tell you more than any single rating scale in the folder.

Walk through the family rather than asking one summary question about it. Who struggled at school, who could never sit through a meal, who changed…

Twenty minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 49:13One line of research

'I am disorganised' cannot be treated. 'The post piles up on the hall table until something ends up with a debt collector' can. Spend the time getting the problem down to something that specific.

Push for the particulars: which task, which moment, what was happening just before, what they did instead. Where you can, ask someone who was there…

Twenty minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 2:31One line of research

Run the assessment yourself and watch while they work. Under real effort you will see the small movements, the tics and the overflow that never appear in ordinary conversation, and none of it reaches you if a technician or an app does the testing.

Sit where you can see hands and face. Note what happens as the task gets harder: the tongue that comes out, the leg that starts going, the free hand…

Twenty minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedCoreQur’an 3:159One line of research

Processing speed is the stubborn one. It shifts a little with repeated, rhythmically paced practice and hardly at all with explanation, so say that to a family at the start rather than when they are disappointed.

Teaching a strategy will not make a slow processor quick, and telling a child to hurry up only makes the work more unpleasant. Graded practice with…

Longer

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

When everything feels flat

The moment before you snap

What you are actually defending

Use your strengths

Making it stick

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Cool the body first

Your nervous system

Structure and routine

Grounding and settling

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Core

Qur’an 18:69

One line of research

Assess, make a plan, do the work, and then keep measuring while you do it. Without that last part you have no way of knowing whether to push harder, change direction or stop.

Use more than one stream: your own measures, what parents notice at home, what school reports, and what the child says about it. Children will tell…

LongerGetting assessed and diagnosedCoreQur’an 42:38One line of research

If your child is learning to settle, learn it alongside them rather than supervising. Parents who practise report less stress of their own and less flying off the handle.

Attention difficulties run in families, so the adult in the room is often working with much the same wiring at the end of a longer day. Practising…

Twenty minutesGrounding and settlingMindfulnessQur’an 16:80Long taught, never tested

When something is genuinely alive for the person in front of you, work with that. Whatever you had planned to cover keeps until a quieter week.

Teaching over the top of live feeling does not land, and it tells the other person that your agenda outranks their week. When there is heat, follow…

Twenty minutesMaking it stickCoreQur’an 18:23One line of research

You can screen for a processing difficulty with no test at all. Just notice, in ordinary conversation, whether the child is answering what you actually said.

A child who drifts off topic, answers a slightly different question, or needs things said twice may not be avoiding you or daydreaming. The words may…

A minuteReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 20:28One line of research

Clapping games, skipping rhymes and silly verses are worth doing. They are good for the ear and they cost nothing, but they will not on their own repair a reading difficulty, and it is kinder to say so early.

Play the games, and separately get the structured teaching that a child with a real decoding problem needs. Families are often told that rhyming…

Five minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 2:185One line of research

Invent words together. Say a made up word, pull it apart into its sounds, put it back, then take one sound out and hear what is left. The nonsense is the point, because there is nothing for memory to fall back on.

With a real word, a child who cannot work with sounds can often get by on memory, and you learn nothing about what they can actually do. A made up…

Five minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 2:31One line of research

Plenty of children read the equals sign as put the answer here. Write it the other way round sometimes, eight equals three plus five, so they meet the idea that both sides are simply the same amount.

Move the sign about. Leave the gap in the middle, four plus something equals two plus five, and watch what the child does with it. If they add…

Five minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 2:32One line of research

Build numbers and break them up again. Seven is five and two, and also six and one, and a child who can see that has the thing mental arithmetic is made of.

Blocks, buttons, coins, anything you can push into two piles and back together. Ask which numbers fit inside other numbers and let the child show you…

Twenty minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 87:8One line of research

In practice, you sometimes have to stop a child using the trick that has kept them afloat, so the weaker skill finally gets used. Expect them to hate it for a while.

If memorising is doing the work, the part that should be doing it never gets a turn. So build short pieces of practice where the workaround is simply…

Twenty minutesReading, numbers and learning differencesCoreQur’an 94:5One line of research

When someone tells you they have been hurting themselves, keep your face steady and stay curious. Alarm closes the conversation, and you need it open.

A visible flinch teaches the person that this is not something you can hear, and the next disclosure goes elsewhere or nowhere. It can also make the…

A minuteWhen everything feels flatParts workQur’an 16:127One line of research

Ask what the behaviour does for them, and then ask how they would like to feel instead. Both questions open more than telling them to stop ever does.

The first question maps what is being managed: numbness, rage, panic, a need to make something visible. The second gives you a goal in their words…

Twenty minutesWhen everything feels flatParts workQur’an 93:5One line of research

The most useful question about a dose is whether the person can tell. A shrug and 'I think it sort of helps a bit' usually means it is not yet doing its job.

At a dose that suits them, most people can say when it comes on, what the middle of the day feels like, and when it leaves. Vagueness points…

A minuteMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 53:28One line of research

Half the useful health information arrives sideways. Someone says 'I am so tired' on the way into another subject, and that is an opening worth taking gently.

People rarely bring sleep or food to a session as a topic, because they do not file them as symptoms. So the tiredness, the skipped meals and the…

A minuteMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 21:83One line of research

Pill swallowing can be taught in a few short sessions with sweets. Start with the tiniest ones, give two to eat for every one swallowed whole, and work up in size across a week.

Keep each session short and cheerful and stop before anyone is upset, since one frightening attempt can set the whole thing back weeks. For capsules,…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:185One line of research

Before you explain anything about medication, ask what the person already believes about it. You cannot correct a worry that has never been said out loud.

Most people arrive carrying something: a cousin who could not sleep, a headline, a parent with a strong view. Lead with your own information and you…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 42:38One line of research

In practice the non-stimulants turn up more often as an addition than on their own. A stimulant in the morning with guanfacine alongside it is a common shape.

The two act at different points of the same circuit, so they tend to complement rather than repeat each other, and the blood pressure effect of one…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 42:38One line of research