elementary school

Study shows why children with ADHD should be reevaluated each year: Attention problems perceived by teachers are far less stable than we imagine

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While the study below was pub­lished a few years ago, it makes an impor­tant point that I think is worth revisiting.

In the study, pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Devel­op­men­tal and Behav­ioral Pedi­atrics, my col­leagues and I looked at how fre­quent­ly teacher rat­ings of inat­ten­tive symp­toms per­sist in chil­dren from one grade to the next. We felt this was an impor­tant issue to exam­ine because recog­ni­tion that ADHD is often a chron­ic con­di­tion can obscure the fact that atten­tion prob­lems do not always reflect an endur­ing child char­ac­ter­is­tic, and that impor­tant changes are pos­si­ble when chil­dren move to a new classroom.

As you will see below, clin­i­cal­ly-ele­vat­ed atten­tion prob­lems as per­ceived by teach­ers are less sta­ble than you may have imag­ined. [Read more…] about Study shows why chil­dren with ADHD should be reeval­u­at­ed each year: Atten­tion prob­lems per­ceived by teach­ers are far less sta­ble than we imagine

Cognitive Development in the first 20 years: A Child’s and Teenager’s Brain

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(Edi­tor’s Note: What fol­lows is an excerpt from Dr. Robert Syl­west­er’s new book, A Child’s Brain. The Need for Nur­ture (2010) Cor­win. In this excerpt, Robert Syl­west­er syn­the­sizes the first 20 years of devel­op­ment and shows how it can be viewed as a “rhyth­mic four-six-four-six-year devel­op­men­tal sequence”)

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Chap­ter 4: Devel­op­ment and Growth.

The First 20 years.

To sim­pli­fy a com­plex phe­nom­e­non, we can divide our 20-year devel­op­men­tal tra­jec­to­ry into two peri­ods of approx­i­mate­ly 10 years each. The devel­op­men­tal peri­od from birth to about age 10 focus­es on learn­ing how to be a human being – learn­ing to move, to com­mu­ni­cate, and to mas­ter basic social skills. The devel­op­men­tal peri­od from about 11 to 20 focus­es on learn­ing how to be a pro­duc­tive repro­duc­tive human being – plan­ning for a voca­tion, explor­ing emo­tion­al com­mit­ment and sex­u­al­i­ty, and achiev­ing autonomy.

The first four years of each of these two decade-long devel­op­ment peri­ods are char­ac­ter­ized by slow awk­ward begin­nings to a six-year nor­mal move toward con­fi­dence and com­pe­tence. For exam­ple, crawl­ing leads to tod­dling leads to walk­ing leads to run­ning and leaping.

We’ve designed our preschool, ele­men­tary school, mid­dles school, high school and ini­tial col­lege sys­tems around this rhyth­mic four-six-four-six-year devel­op­men­tal sequence. We tend to keep small chil­dren at home dur­ing their first four years to allow them to begin their devel­op­ment in a shel­tered fam­i­ly envi­ron­ment with­out state stan­dards and assess­ment pro­grams. They learn basic motor skills, how to talk, and how to get along with their fam­i­lies. In essence, they devel­op a basic under­stand­ing of how their shel­tered world works.

At about five years, we say, in effect, [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Devel­op­ment in the first 20 years: A Child’s and Teenager’s Brain