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.