The Link Between August Birthdays and ADHD (2018)

Re:The Link Between August Birthdays and ADHD (2018) by rconti on Thursday October 20, 2022 @01:35AM (#33271177)

Do you think there's something about the precise age (to within a few months) that a child begins school that drives this bias in diagnosis? Or would we have the same problem with a hard cutoff date, even if all kids started school an entire year later? Or is it largely a matter of how much development a child undergoes even in 1 month at such an age (eg, a combination of factors)?

I guess I ask because there will always have to be a cutoff, even if it's a soft cutoff.

As a non-parent, the best solution I can see is to give the parents the knowledge and freedom to make the choice, and to add this data to perhaps mitigate over-diagnosis (and any attached stigma).

Of course, as I write this out, it occurs to me how much of a burden on parents an extra year without school could be

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Re:The Link Between August Birthdays and ADHD (2018) by em-bee on Thursday October 20, 2022 @02:51AM (#33271599)

the problem seems to be the difference between the oldest and the youngest kid in a class. OP had problems through his school life as they were always the youngest. so starting the same process a year later doesn't seem to help.

what would help is an adaption of the montessori model where an age range of three years is in a class, and the expectation of all kids behaving the same naturally disappears.

doing that at least in kindergarten will at least avoid a mistaken diagnosis for ADHD. but my hope is that montessori kids will also fare better in a regular school because they learned to be more independent.

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Re:The Link Between August Birthdays and ADHD (2018) by alasdair_ on Thursday October 20, 2022 @04:24AM (#33272084)

>I guess I ask because there will always have to be a cutoff, even if it's a soft cutoff.

We could ditch the "academic year" idea entirely and just have kids join the classes when they are ready for them and not force a cohort to all have to learn and progress at exactly the same rate (one which, statistically, is either too slow or too fast for essentially every student).

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Re:The Link Between August Birthdays and ADHD (2018) by johnchristopher on Thursday October 20, 2022 @04:38AM (#33272166)

I don't understand how that would work and solves the "I am almost a year older or younger than others".

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Re:The Link Between August Birthdays and ADHD (2018) by alasdair_ on Thursday October 20, 2022 @04:49AM (#33272238)

You can teach a classroom with children from several years in it. Children then do the work that is at their level, whatever level that happens to be.

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Re:The Link Between August Birthdays and ADHD (2018) by johnchristopher on Thursday October 20, 2022 @07:16PM (#33282076)

I don't think it's as easy as that. Planning and managing different lessons for the same time slot is way harder than planning and managing one lesson for the same time slot. The more kids in the room, the harder it gets.

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