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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12 practices

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When you explain ADHD to someone who does not have it, describe the effort rather than the outcome. Not that the form is unfinished, but what twenty minutes of trying to fill it in actually took out of you.

Most people around you are judging the visible result, because that is all they can see. One concrete picture of the inside of an ordinary task…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 50:16One line of research

Telling parents that their child's self-management is running behind their age usually brings relief rather than alarm. It names something they had already noticed and had been blaming somebody for.

Left unexplained, parents fill the gap with a story, and the story is almost always that the child is choosing this or that they have parented badly.…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 54:49One line of research

Set jobs at the level the child can manage now, then build up. A task pitched at their age that ends in a row every week mainly teaches them they are hopeless at chores.

Break it down further than feels necessary: not tidy your room, but put the clothes in the basket. Stay nearby for the first few goes, since being in…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 5:48One line of research

The teenager with ADHD is often the one who admits it while everyone else produces a story. That is not worse judgement about right and wrong, it is less thinking ahead about how it will land.

Parents can read a caution or a suspension as proof of a moral problem, when the honesty in the room points the other way. Instead of a lecture,…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually is

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

Bringing the future closer

Shame and stigma

The moment before you snap

Breathing

When you use something to cope

Equanimity and perspective

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Emotions as signals

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Remembering to do it

Making it stick

Cool the body first

When everything feels flat

What you are actually defending

Obsessions and compulsions

Help someone grieving

Tolerate distress

The fear underneath anger

Feeling from the inside

Growing empathy

Rest and pacing

Practising under provocation

Being seen and judged

ADHD skills

Qur’an 17:11

One line of research

Some families make it a house rule that driving happens only on a day the medication has been taken. It works because it ties a privilege to safety rather than to obedience.

Set it with the young person rather than at them, and be clear it is about the road and not about whether you trust them. It also moves medication…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 16:43One line of research

If a young person says they do not feel ready to drive, take that as information rather than something to talk them out of. Plenty of them know their own attention better than the adults around them do.

Waiting a year is not a failure, and there are other ways to get about. Do ask what sits behind it, because there is a difference between a sober…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 70:19One line of research

Explain ADHD to the child themselves, in words they can hold. Something like: your brain is brilliant at things it finds interesting and needs extra help with things it finds boring, and we are going to work out that help together.

Children build an explanation whether or not you give them one, and the one they build is usually about being bad. A short, matter of fact account,…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 23:12One line of research

Making a child repeat a year rarely fixes what went wrong. The same lessons without different support tend to produce the same result, plus the sting of being the oldest in the room.

If a year has gone badly, the useful questions are what support was missing and whether something else, such as an unrecognised learning difficulty,…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 5:48One line of research

If work keeps going wrong in the same way, ask for the expectations in writing before the next thing goes wrong. What is obvious to a manager is often not obvious to you, and a written version can be checked.

It might be a list of what counts as done, agreed deadlines, or the safety rules that are not negotiable. Adjustments are worth asking for too:…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 4:28One line of research

A forgotten item in a bag is not a plan. Rules that treat the presence of something as proof of intent fall hardest on people who cannot reliably remember what is in their pockets.

If you are arguing a case like this at a school or a workplace, say plainly that remembering to do something later is one of the areas ADHD affects…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 20:115One line of research

If sport or a club is the reason a struggling student still turns up, do not let it be the first thing taken away when grades slip. Removing it usually removes what was holding the rest together.

Eligibility rules that cut a young person from the team below a certain average tend to take out the structure, the daily exercise, the one place…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 5:48One line of research

When homework takes three hours instead of one, the missing two hours come out of friends, rest and family. That loss is part of the problem, not a side issue.

Ask the school for a time limit rather than a task limit: work for the length of time the work should reasonably take, then stop and have a parent…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research