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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304 practices

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If you carry a firm picture of how the world is supposed to work, the world will break it several times a day. No coping skill outpaces a supply of grievance that never runs out.

This is not a case for caring less about fairness. It is about telling apart an injustice you could act on from the general refusal of life to be…

Twenty minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 3:104One line of research

Someone who holds themselves to an exact standard will often hear a gentle correction as an attack. With them the useful thing is timing: build some trust before you offer the other way of seeing it.

The reframe you have ready is probably right and probably too early. Consistency matters enormously to this person, so an alternative view is not…

Twenty minutesRighteous anger and perfectionismCoreQur’an 16:125One line of research

There is a rough benchmark for homework: about ten minutes a night per school year, so a child in their first year does ten minutes and a final year student tops out near two hours.

It helps to have the number before a school meeting, because "this is too much" sounds like an opinion while a benchmark sounds like a standard. Some…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:286One line of research

A rule that holds in your house and nowhere else is not really a rule. Children locate the unrestricted house within about a week.

So the awkward job is the useful one: a short message to the parents of the two or three friends your child spends most weekends with, agreeing…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionMedical and treatment

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

Food, caffeine and fuel

The fear underneath anger

When you use something to cope

Facing it a step at a time

Anger, alcohol and the body

What worry does

The moment before you snap

Structure and routine

Making it stick

When everything feels flat

Equanimity and perspective

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When anger turns to harm

Letting it out safely

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Obsessions and compulsions

Rest and pacing

Being seen and judged

What you are actually defending

Growing empathy

Choosing your response

Qur’an 4:140

One line of research

When someone says they did not really mean it, that it was not really them, the temptation is to hear an excuse. It is usually better information than that.

Take the disowning seriously and ask what state it came out of. What time was it, how long had they been online, what had happened that day, had they…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCoreQur’an 96:7One line of research

Things posted in ten seconds have got young people excluded from school, and worse. It is worth asking about online conduct in the same routine way you would ask about anything else that could go badly.

Ask what has been posted, what has been sent, what someone would not want read out. Not as an inspection and not as a lecture about permanence, but…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCoreQur’an 23:3One line of research

A whole evening can go into recording an evening. It is worth asking, with no scolding in it, whether you were there for the thing you now have a photograph of.

This lands better than a rule about hours, because it is about something you would miss rather than something you are doing wrong. Try leaving the…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCoreQur’an 28:77One line of research

Among teenagers, saying they want to die has become something you say when the bus is late. You can no longer read intent off the phrase, in either direction.

So the words neither prove there is danger nor prove there is not. What tells you is everything the words leave out: whether there is a plan, whether…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCoreQur’an 4:140One line of research

When a death is filmed and passed around, some of the people who watch it are not all right afterwards, and a few are put in real danger by it. Ask what has been going round.

The question is simple enough. Has anything about someone dying gone round your school or your feed lately, and did you see it. Then ask how it left…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCoreQur’an 6:68One line of research

Nobody gets far taking the drink away without asking what the drinking was for. It is the same here. Find out what the scrolling is doing for someone before you start subtracting hours.

It is doing something, or it would not have lasted this long. Company at one in the morning. A way to stop thinking. Somewhere they are good at…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 3:14One line of research

If the phone was giving you company, an evening class in something practical will not cover it. Match what you put in its place to what it was actually providing.

Subtracting an hour and leaving the hour empty is the version that collapses by Thursday. If it was company, the replacement has people in it. If it…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 28:77One line of research

Write down three to five things you actually enjoy, small ones, and do one of them a day. That is the whole instruction.

They have to be yours rather than the ones that sound impressive. Sitting in the garden with tea counts. Ten minutes on the guitar counts. Keep the…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 33:35One line of research

An alarm that marks the end of a session rather than the start. A written list of what these apps give you and what they cost. The phone's own usage figures. An agreement that an hour of scrolling gets matched with an hour of something else. Pick whichever you would actually do.

The choosing is part of why any of it works. A limit handed down gets tested and beaten, while one somebody picked themselves tends to survive a bad…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 17:110One line of research

Most parents setting rules about an app have never scrolled it for ten minutes. The rules are usually reasonable and the picture underneath them is missing.

This is not really about being permissive. If you do not know that the feed is chosen for you, that one worried search brings a fortnight of similar…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 17:36One line of research

Ask your child to show you their feed and explain it to you. You are asking to be taught rather than to inspect, and from the other side those feel nothing like each other.

Something shifts when the young person is the one who knows more. They slow down, they explain who these people are, they tell you which bits are…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 24:31One line of research

If you want a way back in with a teenager who has gone quiet, ask them to show you the game. Not to assess it. Just to be shown something they are good at.

It works because it asks almost nothing of them. No eye contact, no explaining how they feel, no returning to whatever the last argument was about.…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 31:19One line of research

Ask two questions and then sit with the difference. How much time on this would you like? And how much do you think is actually good for you?

Almost nobody gives the same answer twice, and the gap between the numbers is more persuasive than anything you could have told them, because they…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionADHD skillsQur’an 18:46One line of research

For a week, jot down what was going on just before you picked up the phone, what you were thinking while you scrolled, and how you felt when you put it down. Nothing cleverer than that.

What usually surfaces is not that screens are bad but that two or three specific things are: one account, one time of day, one mood you always reach…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionADHD skillsQur’an 20:131One line of research

Part of what keeps the late start going is that it has genuinely worked. You have produced something good in one long night before, and you remember it clearly.

So telling you that leaving it late is a bad plan tends to fail, because you have evidence and the other person does not. The honest version is…

Twenty minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 18:23One line of research

The dreaming is not the problem. It is that bills, forms and renewal dates are dull enough to stop registering at all, and those are the things that actually damage a life.

People who are managing well in every visible way still get brought down by a lapsed policy or an unopened letter from the council. Trying to care…

Twenty minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 78:11One line of research