What Causes Social Skills Problems in Children with ADHD?

Okay, so let’s get to the bottom of these children’s social skills difficulties. Children with ADHD of all types may have social skills problems, even though their behavior may be varied.


Why? They have social skills deficits. These deficits typically have been described as either “can’t do”1 or “won’t do” (Gresham et al., 2001, p. 33). They either do not know how to behave in a socially appropriate manner or they know how to behave in a socially appropriate manner but do not do so. Children with ADHD have social skills deficits that prevent them from developing positive social skills.

These children typically do not pick up and internalize positive social skills that are modeled by their parents at home in the same way as children without ADHD do. Even though I spent the past several years studying the social skills problems of children with ADHD, Frank Gresham and Steven Elliott have researched social skills since the 1980s and are certainly two of the most prolific researchers in the field.

Their interventions are arguably considered the standard, and despite the fact that the parents in my research did not use the social skills interventions that Elliott and Gresham (1991) developed, these authors mention five reasons why children do not learn positive social skills.

They are:

✱ Lack of knowledge

✱ Lack of practice of feedback

✱ Lack of cues or opportunities

✱ Lack of reinforcement

✱ Presence of interfering problem behaviors. (pp. 28–29)