For parents of children with ADHD

Steps you can try tonight.And how sure anyone actually is.

Search for what to do about your child and you get ten confident answers that disagree with each other. This gives you a few, traced back to journals, each one saying plainly how strong the evidence behind it actually is.

This is not a doctor, and nothing here is a medical opinion. Where your child’s doctor says something different, your doctor is right and this is not. What this offers is things worth trying at home, with the evidence behind them stated plainly — whether you are waiting for help, already getting it, or working out what to do next.

Why this exists

My child has ADHD.

We waited for a therapy place. For those months I spent my evenings looking for something I could do differently the next day. What I found contradicted itself, sounded very sure of itself, and rarely came from anyone who had checked.

This is what I needed then: a few concrete steps, each one honest about how well it is backed. Nothing more.

What is possible tonight

Three building blocks of the parent training that both NICE and the AAP name as first-line for young children. None needs an appointment, a device, or anything bought.

NICE NG87 1.5.2 — first-lineAAP 2019 — rec. 5aOur reading of 12 trials: low

“May help, but the evidence is limited.”

1
Five minutes a day of play you don't direct.
Your child picks the game. You don't ask questions, don't correct, don't instruct — you only say what you see. Most of the attention a child gets is otherwise for the moments something goes wrong.
2
Praise the thing, not the child.
Not “well done”, but “you put your shoes on the rack”. A preschooler hearing “well done” has no idea what to repeat tomorrow.
3
One instruction, face to face, then wait five seconds.
Walk over, wait until they look at you, say one sentence — then stay quiet and count to five. Repeating an instruction teaches a child to wait for the third one.

Two guideline bodies put parent training ahead of medication for children under six. Our own reading of the 12 trials behind these steps still lands at low certainty — so the sentence above is the one the rule picks, not one an author liked. Both are true at once, and a page that showed you only one of them would be the kind of page this site exists against.

Where this comes from

The research, from journals

Every suggestion traces back to studies in peer-reviewed journals — randomised trials, systematic reviews, clinical guidelines — found through PubMed and Europe PMC. Not through a search engine, and not from a forum.

The summary, from a purpose-built AI

Not a general chatbot. It may use only the guides it is handed. Every figure it reports has to appear word for word in the paper it came from, or it is thrown away. How certain a suggestion is, is set by rule from the evidence — the model does not get to choose its own wording. A promise of a cure is refused outright.

Nothing about you is kept

No account, no conversation history, no records. Phone numbers, addresses and email are stripped from what you type before anything reads it. One thing is stored: whether a guide was rated helpful, against a random number your browser made up — with no way back to you.

What this site is not

It does not diagnose, and does not replace a diagnosis.
It says nothing about medication. That belongs with your doctor.
It does not replace therapy — it is for the time before it.
No professional has cleared each suggestion one by one. What is here comes from the research literature, says how strong the evidence is, and stays only as long as parents find it useful.

If it is urgent

In any of these cases get help now — your local emergency number, the nearest emergency department. Do not wait for the next appointment:

Your child is hurting themselves, or says they do not want to be alive
Aggression has already caused an injury
You feel you might hurt your child, or that you have lost control

Conversation

Only questions about ADHD and about children's behaviour, emotions, sleep and parenting. Information, not medical advice. Please don't type names, addresses or phone numbers — they are stripped out before they reach anything.

How old is your child?