Ask HN: My 12 year-old nephew just got diagnosed with ADHD, any advice?

A little more on this topic. No teenager with ADHD will be interested in doing the work I've described above. If his parents aren't interested in it either, your ability to help will be severely limited.

One way to help him to do this work will be to get him out of his intellectual comfort zone. Encourage him to take on tough but fun projects (building big models, electronics kits, doing NAND to Tetris, etc) that will require foresight and planning. Make yourself available if he gets stuck, so that you can help explain that hard problems are only hard if you lack the mental framework required to parse and subdivide and organize them into simpler sub-tasks. If you can get him to sit back and think about how to solve hard problems, you'll be giving him a transferable skill which will be integral to working through life with ADHD and minimizing its impact--and you can do it without actually broaching the topic.

human nature is such that one cannot ever stay on low dose of any drug that feels good… this is why drug dealers will always give you “a taste” for free - they know you will be calling for more and more

> Don't give drugs, they can permanently mess up his mind.

This is common and good advice. Ritalin at one point was prescribed for ADD and ADHD, Kurt Cobain ended up dying by suicide as a result of complications from his use of the drug.

Spectrum disorders have been used for the past 20+ years as catchall diagnoses. There have been many stories of people who were diagnosed with these disorders, when in fact they were exposed to toxic products without their knowledge.

Heavy metal poisoning from chronic low-level exposure for example mimics nearly all the symptoms and won't show up in blood tests without a chelator. The doctor generally has to have an idea of the substance they are looking for to justify ordering the specific tests. Low-level chronic exposure rarely presents

Exposure to many toxins can have these symptoms. Some studies suggest high doses of PFAS, microplastics, or even above safe-limits for flouride, and other industrial contaminants can cause these similar-looking issues.

They are actually quite different causes, and brain damage in the more extreme cases can occur if left untreated, especially in youth which are more susceptible to certain toxins.

I think regardless of the medication decision, a diagnosis like this is a wake up call for self awareness.

Have him start paying attention to himself. Two things that spring to mind are the effects of caffeine and protein. Caffeine causes jitters in normal people and I’ve seen it have overwhelming effects on mentees with concentration difficulties. In one mentee it made concentration impossible. He has now cut it from his diet entirely. When I was mentoring my nephew he was significantly more capable after a protein breakfast compared to a carb breakfast.

Focus on things that work (quiet settings for example) and learn to cope with the things that don’t (my friend has adhd and through coping is immune from distraction, he’s always distracted so he’s always returning from distraction).

Knowing that he’s at a disadvantage he can slow down. Simply consciously going slow and reading things twice can change everything. I knew I was at a disadvantage in my first university course so I read the assigned reading twice. I ended up with the highest grade in the class because I worked to overcome my disadvantage. The coping mechanisms he creates to overcome a disadvantage can become a super power.

There might be simple and easy things that have a huge effect on his ability to concentrate, but he might only notice if he slows down enough to pay attention to them.

> I noticed symptoms in my 5 year old kid

If you don't mind, could you share what those symptoms are? I have 5 year old too and have some suspicions of ADHD.