Participants included 165 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; 130 boys, 35 girls) and their 1,298 same-sex classmates (1,026 boys, 272 girls) who served as raters. For each child with ADHD, a child of the same sex was randomly selected from the same classroom to serve as a comparison child, which yielded 165 dyads. Consistent with predictions, contrasted with the comparison children, those with ADHD were lower on social preference, higher on social impact, less well liked, and more often in the rejected social status category; they also had fewer dyadic friends. When liking ratings that children made versus received were examined, children with ADHD had less positive imbalance and greater negative imbalance relative to comparison children. Analyses that considered the types of peers who chose children with ADHD as friends or nonfriends demonstrated that children with ADHD were nominated as nonfriends by children of higher social preference and who were better liked by others.

The self-perceptions of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; n = 487) were compared with those of children in a local normative comparison group (n = 287), relative to teacher- and parent-rated perceptions of their competence. Children were participants in the ongoing follow-up portion of the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD. Children with ADHD were much more likely than comparison children to overestimate their competence relative to adult report, regardless of who was used as the criterion rater (teacher, mother, or father). Examination by comorbidity subgroups revealed that children with ADHD inflated their self-perceptions the most in domains of greatest deficit. Gender effects also are reported.

Even after evidence-based treatment, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is associated with poor long-term outcomes. These outcomes may be partly explained by difficulties in peer functioning, which are common among children with ADHD and which do not respond optimally to standard ADHD treatments. We examined whether peer rejection and lack of dyadic friendships experienced by children with ADHD after treatment contribute to long-term emotional and behavioral problems and global impairment, and whether having a reciprocal friend buffers the negative effects of peer rejection. Children with Combined type ADHD (N=300) enrolled in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) were followed for 8 years. Peer rejection and dyadic friendships were measured with sociometric assessments after the active treatment period (14 or 24 months after baseline; M ages 9.7 and 10.5 years, respectively). Outcomes included delinquency, depression, anxiety, substance use, and general impairment at 6 and 8 years after baseline (Mean ages 14.9 and 16.8 years, respectively). With inclusion of key covariates, including demographics, symptoms of ADHD, ODD, and CD, and level of the outcome variable at 24 months, peer rejection predicted cigarette smoking, delinquency, anxiety, and global impairment at 6 years and global impairment at 8 years after baseline. Having a reciprocal friend was not, however, uniquely predictive of any outcomes and did not reduce the negative effects of peer rejection. Evaluating and addressing peer rejection in treatment planning may be necessary to improve long-term outcomes in children with ADHD.

Peer-assessed outcomes were examined at the end of treatment (14 months after study entry) for 285 children (226 boys, 59 girls) with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who were rated by their classmates (2,232 classmates total) using peer sociometric procedures. All children with ADHD were participants in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA). Treatment groups were compared using the orthogonal treatment contrasts that accounted for the largest amount of variance in prior MTA outcome analyses: Medication Management + Combined Treatment versus Behavior Therapy + Community Care; Medication Management versus Combined Treatment; Behavior Therapy versus Community Care. There was little evidence of superiority of any of the treatments for the peer-assessed outcomes studied, although the limited evidence that emerged favored treatments involving medication management. Post hoc analyses were used to examine whether any of the four treatment groups yielded normalized peer relationships relative to randomly selected-classmates. Results indicated that children from all groups remained significantly impaired in their peer relationships.Despite the widely accepted premise that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have problematic peer relationships, the mechanisms underlying these peer difficulties remain poorly understood. Deficits in social skills knowledge, performance, and selfcontrol all have been postulated as important factors (for reviews, see Mrug, Hoza, & Gerdes, 2001;Wheeler & Carlson, 1994). Whereas earlier studies (e.g., Cunningham, Siegel, & Offord, 1985) suggested that inattentiveness may be a factor limiting opportunities for observational learning of social skills in children with ADHD, more recent work focuses on performance deficits (Barkley, 2000). Further, it is now widely accepted that a major contributing factor to the peer problems of children with ADHD is their largely unrestrained, overbearing interaction style, characterized by hyperactivity, aggression, bossiness, and other forms of controlling behavior that make them highly aversive to peers (see Mrug et al., 2001;Whalen & Henker, 1992, for reviews).Stimulant medication is useful for reducing rates of these negative and controlling behaviors (Cunningham et al., 1985) but typically yields few corresponding increases in positive behaviors (see Landau &Moore, 1991, andHenker, 1991, for reviews). Nonetheless, laboratory studies requiring normal peers to rate videotaped behavior of children with ADHD in both medicated and unmedicated states suggest that medication-related improvements in behavior are quite apparent to nondeviant peers even after short periods of observation (e.g., 15 min; Whalen, Henker, Castro, & Granger, 1987). Such findings suggest that medication may be an important part of any intervention for the peer problems of children with ADHD but that additional interventions are needed.Most psychological interventions for childhood peer problems are based on the social sk...

Children with attention‐defecit/hyperactivity disorder experience numerous peer difficulties and may benefit from specially designed intervention