Youngest children in class are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with a learning disorder as the oldest children. ADHD was found not to affect the association between month of birth and the likelihood of a learning disability diagnosis.
The register based study included children born in Finland between 1996 and 2002. Of nearly 400,000 children, 3,000 were diagnosed with a specific learning disorder, for example, in reading, writing or math by the age of ten. "We were familiar with the effects of the relative age to the general school performance, but there were no previous studies on the association between clinically diagnosed specific learning disorders and relative age, which is why we wanted to study it," says Doctoral Candidate, MD Bianca Arrhenius from the Centre for Child Psychiatry at the University of Turku, Finland.
In previous studies, children born later in the year, and therefore younger than their classroom peers, have been found to be at increased risk of psychiatric disorders, low academic achievement, and being bullied.
ADHD Does Not Affect Learning Disabilities
Many children with learning disabilities are diagnosed with ADHD. The study compared children with both learning disability diagnosis and ADHD separately from children with learning disabilities but without ADHD, and ADHD was found not to affect the association between month of birth and the likelihood of a learning disability diagnosis.
"This finding was surprising. In children referred to specialist care, the problems are typically complex. We did not expect the impact of relative age on “pure” learning disorder to be so significant, given previous research findings on relative age to ADHD," says Dr Arrhenius.
"Diagnosing learning disorders with psychological tests also takes the exact age of the child better into account compared with the methods used in diagnosing ADHD. For this reason, too, we expected more moderate differences between the months of birth. It seems that relatively young children are more easily sent to specialized health care," Arrhenius ponders.
Aim for Equality
Research shows that teachers, health care personnel, and parents need to be aware of the phenomenon of relative age, especially when assessing a child’s learning ability.
"There is a risk of both over- and under-diagnosis, meaning that the youngest in the class are proportionately diagnosed so much more that the older students in the class may even be deprived of the diagnosis and rehabilitation they need. A more systematic screening for learning disabilities could be one approach that would even out the effect of relative age on referrals to specialized health care," says Arrhenius.
StepUp Note
This article compares the youngest children in the class with the oldest children in the class, for early elementary age children living in Finland. The researchers were surprised to find that relative age (younger vs older child in the class) had a significant effect on a child’s learning. The youngest children in the class were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability than the oldest children in the class.
In classes where children are doing StepUp Programs, teachers can observe which children are able to coordinate movement and talking, to sustain attention and focus for a full minute without stopping, and to quickly and accurately retrieve letter, number and picture names. StepUp exercises are one way for a teacher to look at learning readiness and to decide if a child might benefit from repeating a grade (becoming one of the older rather than the younger children in the class). StepUp's cloud-based programs enrich any PreK - Grade 2 curriculum. Try it free for 30 days!
Note by Nancy W Rowe, M.S., CCC/A