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Hyperactive children do better in school
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Sooner or later, most parents come to the decision to send their child to kindergarten. Some are forced to return to work, some believe that kindergarten will allow the child to socialize faster and prepare for further education at school.
Usually, parents worry most about hyperactive and very active children. It is difficult for them to imagine how a fidgety child, a real domestic typhoon, will be able to get along with the discipline in the kindergarten and follow the instructions of the teachers.
However, experts from the University of Miami were quick to reassure mothers of hyperactive children, which cannot be said about mothers of shy and uncommunicative children. Scientists believe that such children are at the greatest risk of being unable to adapt to a group of children.
The study, one of the first to examine social and academic achievement in preschool-aged children, was published in the journal School Psychology.
As it turned out, children with a secretive character and unwillingness to make contact showed a low level of academic performance, both at the beginning of the school year and a year after training.
“It’s no secret that every parent wants their children to be able to count and know their alphabet before they start kindergarten, but few realize that an important component of successful learning, starting at an early age, is social-emotional readiness,” says Rebecca Bulotsky-Shearer, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami.
Behavioural problems begin when there is a mismatch between the child's capabilities and the load of the educational program. As the results show, shy children begin to develop complexes because of their ignorance.
“Typically, withdrawn preschoolers just ‘get lost’ in a group,” says Elizabeth Bell, PhD, a psychology major and co-author of the study. “The same thing happens in school. These kids become withdrawn and don’t participate in the life of the class.”
Experts also found out that the overly active behavior of their peers is due to the desire to attract the teacher's attention. In the event that this line of behavior still works, then calmer children risk being deprived of the teacher's attention.
The children who went to kindergarten at an older age turned out to be the most adapted to life in the group. These children had fewer problems with adaptation and showed a higher level of social skills, literacy, language and mathematics abilities.
Experts hope that the research results will draw public attention to the problem and that new approaches to solving the problem, taking into account the needs of different children, may then be considered.
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