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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A few medicines leave very little space between the amount that helps and the amount that harms. Lithium is the classic one, and with those the blood test is part of the treatment rather than paperwork.

With a narrow window, things that would be trivial elsewhere start to matter: a bout of dehydration in hot weather, a course of anti inflammatory…

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

For someone who cannot swallow tablets, or whose mornings fall apart long before the tablet gets taken, patches exist that release medicine slowly through the skin over hours.

Going through the skin skips the first pass through the liver and smooths out the peak, which changes the timing and sometimes how well it is…

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

One kind of long acting tablet works like a tiny pump. Water is drawn in, an inner layer swells, and the medicine is pushed out steadily through a laser drilled hole. The empty shell comes out whole in the stool, which alarms anybody who was not warned.

The design gives a level that climbs gently through the day instead of peaking early, which helps because the body becomes a little less responsive…

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

Some medicines arrive inactive and only become active once the body has broken them apart. Because that conversion happens at a fixed rate, the peak is blunted, the effect stretches out, and getting the drug in faster does not make it work faster.

That last part answers a fear a lot of families carry quietly, since crushing or snorting such a product gains nothing at all. It also explains why…

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

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

The same loss of appetite means very different things in different children. A slight child who was already struggling to gain weight may need a different formulation or a different medicine altogether.

For a sturdy child a smaller lunch is a nuisance. For one with nothing spare it is a reason to change the plan. Non-stimulant options exist and are…

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

Every workplace runs on a map nobody prints: who really decides, who to ask, what the polite route is. Picking that up by osmosis is exactly the channel that struggles here.

So you follow the written process, do it correctly, and it goes wrong anyway, and nobody can tell you why. The repair is to have it taught rather…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:114One line of research

When appetite disappears at lunchtime, work with the child's rhythm instead of against it. Feed them properly at the hours they are actually hungry, which is usually breakfast and then the late afternoon and evening.

What counts over a week is the total, not whether it arrived at the socially correct hour. A decent breakfast before the medicine takes hold, a light…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 7:32One line of research

Non-stimulants are usually tried after the stimulants rather than instead of them, mostly because they are harder to tolerate. That is about order, not about the drug being second rate.

There are people for whom one is the right first choice: tics, real anxiety alongside, a history that makes a stimulant a poor idea, or a body that…

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

Treat the first fortnight as a stretch that needs contact rather than silence. Say plainly that things may feel worse before they feel better, and arrange to hear from the person during that window instead of after it.

This is when most people quietly stop. Somebody who has been warned experiences a rough two weeks as expected; somebody who has not experiences it as…

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

A long acting injection into muscle releases its medicine slowly over weeks. It lifts the daily burden of remembering, at the price of not being able to stop quickly if the medicine disagrees with you.

That trade is worth naming out loud rather than settling on someone's behalf. For a person whose entire difficulty is the daily doing, weeks of cover…

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

For most people who get as far as asking for help with ADHD, medication is the single change that shifts the most. It is not compulsory and plenty live well without it, and it does deserve an honest look rather than a place at the back of the queue.

The reason is unglamorous. Nearly every strategy anyone teaches assumes you can pause before responding, hold a plan in mind while doing something…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 26:80One line of research

If you are not the one prescribing, you can still take an active part in the medication conversation. You see the person weekly and hold the ordinary detail their prescriber never gets to see.

Ask what they notice and write it down in their own words. With their permission, send the prescriber a short note that can be read in a minute: when…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 42:38One line of research

A child who has spent years being told they are careless will often say yes to whoever finally seems glad of them. Work on how they see themselves is not a soft extra to the clinical work.

Count the corrections in a single day and it is easy to see what accumulates. By the time an offer comes from someone friendly, the pull is belonging…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 39:53One line of research

Most people who try do find something that helps, but often not the first thing they try. Not responding to one class of stimulant says surprisingly little about the other.

The high response figures you may have read come from people who worked through more than one option, not from one prescription going well. Response…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 33:5One line of research

One of the founding figures of biological psychiatry summed the whole business up as some medicine helping some people at some doses some of the time. Knowing that before you start makes the first disappointment much easier to survive.

Most people need more than one adjustment: the dose, then the timing, sometimes the drug itself. Go in expecting the first prescription to be the…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:5One line of research

When you need to correct one person, say it to the room. Everyone gets the instruction and nobody gets the sting.

Good instructors do this without thinking: they see one child dropping their guard and say that everybody needs to keep their hands up. The teaching…

A minuteMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 31:19One line of research

Use a timer you can see rather than a warning you have to remember. A dial that shrinks, or a light that goes from green to red, does the work that five more minutes never quite does.

Time is not something everyone feels passing. Turning it into something you can look at moves the job from guessing to seeing, which is much easier.…

A minuteMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:47One line of research

When someone describes a day like that, do not answer with a lecture on living better. Say that this is hard, and that you find parts of it hard too.

They have heard the virtue speech many times already and it has never once helped. Admitting that you also struggle to exercise, or to keep up with…

A minuteMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 25:63One line of research

Teaching a child to fight works better when it comes with a plain rule: you defend, you never start it. The rule is doing as much work as the training.

A child whose brakes are slow benefits from having the decision made in advance, out loud, many times over. Then it is not something to work out in…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:60One line of research

Before you decide a club is out of reach, ask. Some let children earn the uniform through the levels, and plenty have quiet arrangements for families who need them.

Cost keeps more children out of these things than lack of interest does. A single phone call is worth making, and the answer is often better than the…

Five minutesMoving your bodyMedical and treatmentQur’an 53:39One line of research