Early Predictors of School Success: A study published in the current issue of Developmental Psychology finds that early math and reading skills, as well as attention-related skills, seem to predict later academic success, while behavior issues and social skills do not. The study is a meta-analysis of six other studies involving nearly 36,000 preschoolers. Knowledge of early math concepts, such as grasp of numbers and numbering, was the best predictor of success. One of the researchers notes, “Our results did not address what types of preschool curricula are most effective in promoting these school readiness skills…But we do know that play-based, as opposed to ‘drill-and-practice,’ curricula designed with children’s developmental needs in mind can foster academic and attention skills in ways that are engaging and fun.”

Drugs Not Beneficial for ADHD? One of the authors of a 1999 study that concluded that medication is more effective than behavior therapy in treating ADHD now states:

“I think that we exaggerated the beneficial impact of medication in the first study. We had thought that children medicated longer would have better outcomes. That didn’t happen to be the case. There’s no indication that medication’s better than nothing in the long run.”

Moreover, drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta, he notes, tend to stunt a child’s physical growth.

“The children had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth so they weren’t growing as much as other kids both in terms of their height and in terms of their weight.”