Kids Labeled For ADHD Just Young for Their Grade?

Trae Pina
Kids Labeled For ADHD Just Young for Their Grade?



Are some kids wrongfully labeled as ADHD just because they are young for their grade? That is what this article is about. A kid is easily distracted, fidgety, and interruptive in class. Does this mean he has ADHD or acting his or her age? This can all depend on when a child’s birthday is relative to school enrollment cut-off dates. This could mean the difference in being the oldest or the youngest in the class and being diagnosed with ADHD. Researchers found that many students who’s birthday fell right before the cut-off had a much higher rate of kids diagnosed with ADHD than those who’s birthdays fell a day or two after the cut off and were the oldest in the grade below. The researchers believe that these younger kids are mistakenly being diagnosed with ADHD, and are really just not as mature as other kids. This could all be due to when your birthday falls in the school year. Researchers found that being young for a grade more than doubles your chance of being diagnosed or treated for ADHD.

These same kids also had twice the chance of taking Ritalin by middle and junior high school than older kids in the same grade. If a kid can’t pay attention and won’t sit still it might be because he’s five and not six. That is a big difference at that age and this needs to be taken into account by teachers when evaluating these kids. Almost 4.5 million U.S. children under eighteen have been diagnosed with ADHD, and 2.5 million kids take medicine to counteract the symptoms. If the findings in these studies are hold true, then about twenty percent will have been misdiagnosed due to their young age. This might be bad to those who took the medication and didn’t need it, because the impacts of taking the drug for a long term are unknown. Not to mention that parents have spent on their misdiagnosed kids for the medication, doctors, and tests on the child.
This article was published so that the growing mistake of misdiagnosing children with ADHD could be made public. This may mean something to you or it may not, but to those parents who have children who have been diagnosed with ADHD and the kids; this could mean that you have been mistakenly diagnosed and paying for unneeded medications, tests and doctors. This also sheds light on how just because a kid could be young for his grade he could be misdiagnosed for a serious disorder