Young Children with ADHD Have Substantial School Readiness Challenges

Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more likely to have poor academic outcomes. One way to identify young children at high educational risk is to assess the five school readiness domains: physical well-being and motor development; social-emotional development; approaches to learning; language development; and cognition/general knowledge.

To evaluate whether children with ADHD have more school readiness impairments, researchers conducted a battery of tests to examine skills in the five domains in 93 children ages 4 and 5 years — 45 children with parent- or clinician-reported ADHD symptoms and 48 who served as a comparison group. Impairment in a domain was defined as a score ≥1 standard deviation lower than the gr…