Classroom-Level Intervention to Promote Peers' Acceptance of Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) comprise about 5-10% of the elementary school-age population. One place where children with ADHD have great difficulty is in being accepted by peers and in making friends. It has unfortunately been very difficult for the field to find good treatments for peer relationship problems for this population. Even when children with ADHD do improve their behavior, it is common that peers do not seem to like the child with ADHD any better. This may happen because children often have negative reputations with their classmates that are hard to change. That is, once a class of children get the impression that one child is disliked or the social outcast, even if that child's ADHD symptoms get better, the peer group may not notice any of these improvements. It is hypothesized that the elementary school teacher may be able to help peers notice positive behavior changes in children with ADHD when they do occur. This clinical trial will design and pilot-test an intervention that would train teachers in classroom practices to reduce the peer rejection of students with ADHD. The pilot test will be conducted in a summer program created to be similar to a regular school classroom in structure. If the treatment seems to succeed in the summer program, then it will be tried in regular classrooms in a future study.