"What color were those eels, Henry my boy? / What color were those eels, my pride and joy?"

[larryhammer]

"Greeeeen and yeller / greeeeen and yeller / Mother be quick I've got to be sick and lay me down to die"

I've lost the attribution, and it's only two related studies, but it's still suggestive enough to pass along: Kindergartners who just made the age cut-off for enrolling, and so are younger than the average for their class, are diagnosed as ADHD at a higher rate than those who just missed the cut-off and so are the oldest kids in the next class, even though they are just days apart in age. In other words, being young is being mistaken for a clinical condition.

Are we surprised?

---L.

Comments

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

The child development major is not surprised, not even a little.

[larryhammer]

Ha!

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1EV9uC/www.onion.demon.co.uk/theonion/other/babies/stupidbabies.htm

[larryhammer]

Well, yeah. Except, of course, our nephew.

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

Hehe.

[jennifer-j-s.livejournal.com]

You might enjoy the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. It's pretty eye-opening. He looks at everything from Canadian junior hockey players (and sees a trend in birth months, like your example) to the culture at Korean Airlines, and how once it was changed, the accident rate went down.

[larryhammer]

I find Gladwell to be very good at authoritative glibness, but find some of what he says be a bit dubious. Blink, for example, glosses over the role of experience and preparation in forming hunches.

---L.

[jennifer-j-s.livejournal.com]

Some of the cause and effect scenarios left me dubious, too, particularly the one about musicians. But they are not ideas that I normally think about, and he did make me think about things differently, so I give him props for that.

My book club is going to be talking about this on Saturday, so I am excited to hear what others got from the book.