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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625 practices

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Long acting stimulants are the usual starting point for a plain reason: they cover the most hours and they remove the lunchtime dose, which is the dose ADHD is most likely to swallow whole.

Remembering a tablet in the middle of a busy day is itself an executive task, so asking for it is asking the person to do the thing they came for…

A minuteMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research

Worry about height is one of the commonest reasons families hesitate. The answer is to measure: height and weight plotted at every review, so you are watching an actual line rather than guessing at one.

Growth speeds up and slows down for all sorts of reasons during the years a child might be medicated, and one measurement tells you almost nothing. A…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:35One line of research

If a small child cannot swallow tablets, that is a solvable problem rather than a reason to give up on treatment. One methylphenidate preparation comes as a skin patch.

Children who cannot manage pills often will not say so in words. What you see instead is spitting, hiding, gagging, or a battle every morning. Ask…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 5:6One line of research

People often refuse one name and accept another when both contain the same drug. Ritalin and Concerta are both methylphenidate, delivered differently.

A brand collects a reputation that has nothing to do with the molecule, usually from something somebody said years ago. So ask plainly: what is the…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatment

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

Structure and routine

The moment before you snap

What worry does

Grounding and settling

Bringing the future closer

When everything feels flat

Equanimity and perspective

Breathing

Treatment and medication

Choosing your response

Remembering to do it

Reading, numbers and learning differences

When you use something to cope

Shame and stigma

Posture and how you carry yourself

Practising under provocation

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Being seen and judged

Obsessions and compulsions

The fear underneath anger

Shame

Rest and pacing

Help someone grieving

Gratitude

Fondness and admiration

Feeling from the inside

Ask and say no well

What you are actually defending

Living with uncertainty

Validate yourself and others

When you go numb

Safety and grounding

Qur’an 10:59

One line of research

A child who barely touches lunch may still eat a normal amount across the day. Look at breakfast and dinner before concluding that they are not eating.

The usual pattern is a decent breakfast, very little at midday and a large dinner, with appetite returning as the dose wears off. So make the two…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:81One line of research

When a dose that was working seems to stop working in a growing child, check height and weight before you reach for the word tolerance. These medicines are dosed by body weight, and a child can simply have outgrown the dose.

It is the cheaper explanation and the more common one, and it takes a single appointment to test. Bring the growth chart and the dates when you…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:43One line of research

An untreated attention difficulty rarely stays a blank space. People tend to find something that steadies them, and what they find is not always kind.

Nicotine, coffee at strange hours, cannabis in the evening, a bit of somebody else's prescription: these are often attempts at self correction rather…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 26:80One line of research

Parents often ask whether starting a stimulant now makes drug problems more likely later. The question deserves the actual evidence, gently given, rather than reassurance.

It is one of the most studied worries in this field, followed in the same children across years instead of guessed at. Say what was looked at and…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 49:6One line of research

Conversations about alcohol and cannabis tend to be timed for the child you expect to have at fourteen. With an attention difficulty in the picture, start them earlier and keep them light.

Early does not mean heavy. It means the subject is already open, so the first offer is not the first mention. Keep the tone curious rather than…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:43One line of research

In simulator work the biggest improvements on medication show up in the drivers who were worst without it: stopping properly, slowing for an amber, actually looking around.

That pattern is quietly reassuring. A drug that made everyone sharper would lift the good drivers as well, and this does not look like that. It looks…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 55:8One line of research

When you are weighing up whether a teenager is ready for something, it helps to think in two thirds. A fifteen year old may be handling responsibility more like a twelve or thirteen year old.

This is not an insult and it should never be delivered as one. It is a way of explaining why a privilege arrives later here than for their friends,…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:286One line of research

Canada once pulled a stimulant from the market after four cardiac deaths, then reversed the decision. Three of the four had heart abnormalities from birth and the fourth had been hiking in desert heat without water.

A handful of deaths with nothing to compare them against cannot tell you what caused them. That is an uncomfortable thing to say about people who…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 49:6One line of research

Rules about ADHD and military service move with recruiting needs. Send a family to a recruiter for the current position rather than answering from memory.

Every version has been seen: medication allowed, medication stopped before basic training, the diagnosis treated as disqualifying, the diagnosis…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:44One line of research

No behavioural programme matches what medication does to the core symptoms. It is an uncomfortable sentence for anyone who would rather not medicate, and it is what the trials keep showing.

That does not make the rest of the work pointless, and it does change the order things go in. Where someone is drowning, the fastest reliable help…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 26:80One line of research

Public health messages sometimes say parent training works just as well as medication and carries no side effects. Both halves of that are wrong, and a family who believes it can lose a year.

Parent training is genuinely useful and it is hard work, costing time, money, patience and a good deal of household goodwill. Calling it free of side…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:36One line of research

Medication belongs in ordinary treatment here rather than at the end of the queue. Most people with a clear diagnosis will use it at some point.

Strategies and accommodations do real work while somebody is watching, and they fall away in the settings where nobody is. That is most of adult…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:28One line of research

Nobody is sitting in the passenger seat handing out rewards for safe driving. Medication is the part of treatment that is present when no adult is.

Behavioural plans need somebody to run them. The moments carrying the most risk in adolescence are the ones with nobody there: the drive home, the…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 65:3One line of research

Parents and teachers warm to a plan that includes something they do, rather than a prescription on its own. That is not a scientific argument and it still matters.

People stay with treatment they believe in, and belief rises when they have a part in it. So offering the behavioural piece is doing two jobs at…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:159One line of research

A plain immediate release tablet works for roughly three to five hours, so an ordinary school day needs two or three of them. If the afternoons keep falling apart, that gap is worth naming out loud with the prescriber rather than reading it as failure.

Repeat dosing in the middle of the day asks a lot of everyone. Somebody has to remember, the school office has to hold a controlled drug, and a child…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:28One line of research

If the patch brings a rash, it is usually a reaction to the medicine passing through the skin rather than to the sticky backing. Worth knowing, because switching brand or trying a kinder tape will not fix it.

Skin has its own way of reacting to something held against it for hours at a time, and that reaction stays local. Saying this early saves a family a…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:43One line of research