From NPR: “The youngest children in a school class are most likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, when in fact their comparatively fidgety behavior may be due to their relative immaturity, according to a study published online Wednesday. […]
‘You could certainly imagine a scenario in which two kids who are in a class who are different in age by almost a year could be viewed very differently by a teacher, or school personnel who’s evaluating them,’ says Dr. Anupam Jena, a physician and economist at Harvard Medical School. ‘A year of age difference in a 5-year-old or a 6-year-old is huge.’
Scouring a database of insurance claims encompassing more than 400,000 children, the researchers categorized children by their month of birth. And the report in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that the youngest children in the classroom â those born in August â were about 35 percent more likely to get a diagnosis of ADHD and to be treated for the condition. […]
The scientists didn’t find this difference in states that don’t enforce a Sept. 1 enrollment date, and they didn’t find any other health differences among the August-born children in the study.”
