New research confirms what many parents of children with ADHD know from experience: the effects of ADHD often begin to take their toll on children as early as second grade.

According to an article in HealthDay, Australian researchers have found that “Children between 6 and 8 years old who were tested and scored high for ADHD symptoms were more likely to get lower grades in elementary school and have trouble fitting in with other kids, compared with children without ADHD.”

The study’s lead author, Dr. Daryl Efron, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician with the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne said:

Already at this stage, which is relatively young, it’s very clear the children have important functional problems in every domain we registered. On every measure, we found the kids with ADHD were performing far poorer than the control children.

This study, published in the journal Pediatrics, is one of the first reports to come out of a long-term project that is following nearly 400 children ages 6 to 8, 179 of whom have ADHD while the rest serve as a control group. The children will be followed throughout their remaining school years.

In other findings, this study showed that the children with ADHD were also “more likely to have other mental health or developmental problems, such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression.”

Commenting on the study, Dr. David Fassler, a University of Vermont clinical professor of psychiatry noted, “I would fully agree with the authors’ conclusion that the results of the study underscore the need for earlier recognition and treatment of ADHD in young children.”