"He was fine on holiday."
We hear a version of that sentence in clinic most weeks. Sometimes it is "he was fine at his grandma's". Sometimes it is "she was brilliant in the first week with the new teacher".
It has been on our minds again, because a lot of families have been talking to us about "The Great ADHD Myth?" on Channel 4, and about the six weeks at the centre of it.
The programme's closing caption reported that the boy it followed returned to his medication a couple of months after filming, that his school work improved, and that he hoped to try coming off again in future.
We are not going to tell you what to make of that. His family made a decision for their son in public, and every part of that decision is theirs.
What we can offer is the occupational therapy view of the six weeks themselves.
Six weeks is a short window to learn much about any child, and those particular six weeks had a great deal happening inside them.
They were summer weeks, with no school in them. There was a film crew in the house. And every adult around him was paying closer attention than usual.
Each one of those things supports regulation.
Novelty regulates. Undivided attention regulates. A stretch of days with fewer demands in it regulates.
And each one of them fades.
Which is part of why families so often come to us in October rather than in August. The holiday goes well. The first fortnight of term goes well. Then the corridors and the changeovers and the double lesson after lunch arrive, and the difficulties everyone hoped had gone come back.
If that is your autumn, please hear this. You did not do anything wrong. The conditions changed.
Working out which conditions, in what order, and what to do about them on an ordinary Tuesday in November is a large part of what an occupational therapist is for.
It is slower than six weeks. It is also the part that lasts.
Some of you told us last week that you chose not to watch, or that you switched it off. That was a reasonable decision and we would not argue with anybody who made it.
What came through most in what you said is that families are not looking to be reassured, and are not looking for an argument either. You want practical help, and you want the weight of it taken seriously.
That is what we are here for, and that has not changed.
If your child is struggling, they are struggling. You are not overreacting.
So tell us the one thing you are most unsure about as this term starts, and we will answer what we can.
Because regulation comes before learning.
OT4me
We transform lives through occupational therapy and sensory integration, you can book a free 30-minute consultation with one of our therapists.
Last night, Channel 4 broadcast "The Great ADHD Myth?"
We see children like Mason every day.
If you watched, you met him. Ten years old, medicated for two years, taken off it for six weeks.
Mason's family made a decision for Mason. That is theirs to make, and we would not second-guess it from the outside.
You will have your own view on the programme. Here is ours.
Some of what it raised is fair. Assessment quality varies enormously. Waiting lists are indefensible. An assessment that never involves the school is missing half the picture.
But the argument underneath it, that modern life is manufacturing these children, does not match what we see.
Because the children in our clinic are not new.
They are the ones who were called dreamy in 1994, and lazy in 2003, and disruptive in 2011.
And they are the adults.
The ones who come to us at forty, having spent a career being told they had potential, quietly building an entire life around something nobody ever named. Who have their own systems, their own workarounds, their own reasons for not answering the phone.
Some of them watched last night and wondered, all over again, whether they had made the whole thing up.
You did not make it up.
Diagnosis rates went up. We do not think the children did. What changed is that people started looking.
NHS England's own independent taskforce reported last year that this remains under-recognised and under-supported in this country. That reads to us less like an epidemic and more like a backlog reaching the front of the queue.
If the programme made sense to you, that is not a failure of judgement. It asked some real questions.
There is one more thing worth saying.
Waiting is not the neutral option. It has a cost, and the child pays it. In friendships that do not get made. In a Year 6 that decides who they are before anyone has understood them. In an adult who spent three decades assuming the problem was their character.
So we would not tell you to wait and see.
And if you take one thing from this into your next meeting at school, take a question. What is happening in the twenty minutes before it goes wrong? It gets better answers than why did he do that.
Over 500 families across Yorkshire have come through our door. Not one of them came lightly.
If your child is struggling, they are struggling. That was true before last night and it is true this morning. A programme cannot tell you what you have been watching in your own kitchen for years.
You are not overreacting. You have been right about this for a while.
If you watched it, we would like to know what you made of it. We will be reading.
18/08/2026
We're hiring. Senior Occupational Therapist, Sensory Integration.
Our team is growing, and we're looking for an experienced OT with postgraduate Sensory Integration training to join us here in York.
Full-time. Salary dependent on experience.
You would work with children and young people across our purpose-built clinic, in schools and in family homes, delivering evidence-based OT and sensory integration intervention, alongside a team that genuinely looks after each other.
We are looking for someone who is HCPC registered, holds postgraduate SI training or certification, enjoys working with neurodivergent children with complex needs, and is committed to evidence-based, collaborative practice.
Based in York, North Yorkshire.
To apply, send your CV and a short covering email to [email protected]
Know a brilliant OT who might be looking for their next move? Please share this with them.
Because the right team is what makes the difference for every family we support.
16/08/2026
Our social media manager is on holiday. So we asked the children instead.
Every caption in this carousel is a real thing a child has said to us in clinic. Their words, about their own bodies.
"i move so i can listen."
"writing makes my hand tired."
"not naughty. too much."
A child who is overwhelmed is not being difficult. Their nervous system is doing exactly what it was built to do, with more input arriving than it can organise. What gets recorded as behaviour is very often regulation, and what gets recorded as refusal is very often a body that cannot hold the position, grip the pencil, or filter the noise for long enough to take part.
Children rarely have the vocabulary for interoception, proprioception or vestibular input. So it arrives as "my hands need a job", or "the shop is too loud". The information is all there. It just does not sound clinical, so it gets missed.
Teachers and SENCOs, we know your role is complex and the referral list is long. If one of these lines sounds like a child on your caseload, that is a sensory processing question worth asking before it becomes a behaviour plan.
Because regulation comes before learning.
🟠Book a free 30-minute call with an OT: https://ot4me.co.uk
Nothing in this room is there by accident.
After every session the whole thing comes apart. The swings come down, the mats get folded, everything goes back in the cupboard. Then it gets built again for the next child, because what helped one child will not be what the next one needs.
The swing height, the surfaces underfoot, how much clear floor there is: all of it is a decision, and it is made for one child at a time.
If you are wondering what your child might need, you can book a free 30-minute call with one of our OTs here: https://ot4me.co.uk/book
Should you hide food in your child's dinner?
Blending vegetables into a meal a child already accepts is one of the most common strategies families try. It is also one of the most likely to backfire.
For children who experience sensory processing difficulties, a safe food is safe precisely because it is predictable. Same look, same smell, same texture, every time. Alter it and the predictability goes, and the trust goes with it. The food is often lost from the accepted list altogether.
Louise Newton, our Clinical Director, is candid that she did this herself.
What works better:
Keep safe foods completely unchanged.
Introduce new foods alongside, with no expectation that they are eaten.
Agree consistency with school catering, or move to a packed lunch.
Involve the child in packing it. Ownership does more for intake than persuasion.
For SENCOs and catering teams this is worth knowing. A well meant substitution in a school dinner can undo months of careful work at home, and the child is rarely able to explain why lunch is suddenly refused.
Because a safe food is worth more than a hidden vegetable.
"Rachel helped change our trajectory."
A parent wrote that. Not about a report, or a piece of equipment, or a strategy. About what happened to their family once somebody finally listened properly.
This week our Clinical Lead, Rachel Derry, marks three years at OT4me.
Thirteen years an occupational therapist. Qualified at York St John, sensory integration trained, further qualified at Ulster. Children and young people aged 3 to 18, across education and health settings.
The credentials are not why parents write sentences like that one.
Rachel starts with the family, not the file. She asks what your day actually looks like. The supermarket. The school gate. The twenty minutes before bed. Then she works out what would genuinely help, rather than what looks tidy on paper.
Her work sits across the whole picture rather than one end of it: the person, the environments they move through, and the things they actually need to do. Which means the conversation is rarely only about the child. It is about the classroom, the routine, the expectations, and the adults in the room.
She also carries much of our public education work. If you have joined one of our free webinars, you have most likely learned something from Rachel.
Three years of that adds up to a lot of families who arrived worried and left with a plan.
Thank you, Rachel.
When regulation improves, participation follows. Rachel has spent three years making sure it does.
Why is everyone suddenly neurodivergent?
Lizzie Huxford, Clinical Director at OT4me, hears this question a lot. After more than 20 years in the health sector, her answer is simple: they have always been here.
Think about the night sky. The sky has not changed, and the stars did not suddenly appear. They were always there. What changed was our telescopes: better lenses, better methods, better understanding.
Lizzie explains it in under a minute.
The therapist doesn't choose the session. Your child does.
Parents often tell us their child refuses things at home that they will happily do somewhere else. You are not imagining that, and it is rarely about the activity itself. It is about who decided.
So in our sessions, we hand the deciding over.
The children write on this wheel themselves. Lycra swing, crash mat, trapeze bar, scooter board, rice box. They spin it, and whatever it lands on is what we build the session around.
It looks like we have given up the plan. We have not. Every option on that wheel is already working towards the functional goals we set with each family, whether that is the core stability to sit and write, coping with a busy classroom, or getting dressed in the morning without a battle. The wheel chooses the order. It does not choose the plan.
What changes is buy-in. A child who picked the challenge will push further into it than a child who was handed one, and for children with sensory processing difficulties that difference is often the whole session.
Because choice comes before challenge.
Book a free 30-minute call with an OT: https://ot4me.co.uk/book
02/08/2026
Teethbrushing is the moment the whole evening falls apart 🦷
If that is your house, know this: you are not overreacting, and your child is not being difficult.
For an autistic child with a PDA profile, a toothbrush is not just a toothbrush. It is a demand. And demands, however small and however reasonable they look from the outside, can set off a real anxiety response. What looks like refusal is usually a nervous system saying no because saying yes feels unsafe.
So we lower the demand rather than raising the pressure.
That might look like sitting together for five minutes before the toothbrush appears at all. Offering a genuine choice between the blue one and the green one. Dimming the lights, trying a different paste, brushing a favourite toy first. Handing back some control with "it's your choice what we do next."
None of this is giving in. Autonomy is the strategy.
We have put eight of the approaches we use most often into the graphic below. Start with one. Even holding the toothbrush is progress worth naming.
If bedtimes, mealtimes or mornings feel like a daily battle in your house, we would love to talk it through with you.
🟢 Book a free 30-minute call with an OT at https://ot4me.co.uk/book
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