My 7 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD and LD’s last year. With him it was not a matter of if he had it but when he was old enought to be diagnosed with ADHD. We suspected something was wrong when he was about 3.
We also have a 10 year old daughter. She seems to have everything. She is popular, a good student(although I think she does have the potential to do better), she’s artistic and basically you wouldn’t think she has any problems in the world. Now that she is in 4th grade I am beginning to think that maybe she also has ADHD. She is disorganized, always needs reminders to do things, talkative, argumentive, and without my pushing her projects wouldn’t be done tests studied for etc. We see a family psycologist and he feels that she probably does have ADHD but since it isn’t effecting her social or acadamic life not to worry about it right now.
Can anyone tell me some of the differences between male and female ADHD if there is such a thing?
Re: Differences between Girls and Boys with ADHD
Roxie is right. Girls are often do not display the hyperactive behavior that so often identifies boys with adhd. They generally tend to be more inattentive type. I know there is an article somewhere on this website about girls and adhd. I can take a look for it later but I have to get to church!
Re: Differences between Girls and Boys with ADHD
I am always worried when this topic comes up. It is so easy to slide from real concern for different groups of kids into prejudice and discrimination. As a woman who majored in math, twice because the first try didn’t work out, I have met more than enough academic and social discrimination and my antennae are on alert for it.
Remember that all division of groups of humans is a question of probabilities and percentages. *Most* boys my be in group A, but some are in group B, and *most* girls may be in group B, but some are in group A. I call this the 80%-90% fallacy; if you can make a generalization about 90% of any human group that is a very good generalization, but it still isn’t everybody!! You are still missing millions of people who are in the “outlier” 10%. And those millions of people may be badly hurt by being ignored.
Always be careful, and beware of absolute dogma.
Re: Differences between Girls and Boys with ADHD
Amen to that Victoria. I could not agree more completely. But why does this topic have to come up so frequently? Boys are THIS way, girls are THAT way, or, “this pertains especially to BOYS”, etc., etc. I don’t just mean by any poster on this board, but EVERYWHERE. I say this not only because I have two daughters,who are such total opposites, the older one perhaps the most rambunctious child, male or female, I have ever come into contact with! Nor do I say it because I happen to be a woman.
I have run into discrimination myself in my former career in New York when I was younger. I’ll never forget an incident when a co-worker, on the same level as me, and who at that time considered me an esteemed colleague, recalled the day I was hired. He actually told me his comment to our boss was, “I can’t believe you just hired the red-headed bimbo.”
I dislike generalizations of any kind, because they are inaccurate, incorrect, wrong. But this one is my particular pet peeve.
Re: Differences between Girls and Boys with ADHD
Boys are more likely to have ADHD with impulsivity and girls to have ADHD-inattentive. They present very differently.
That said my boy has been diagnosed with ADD-inattentive. He is well behaved, the least impulsive of my children (2 boys, 1 girl).
Things I/teachers have noticed:
My son is the king of distraction. Everything but what he is doing interests him. He knows a lot and is interested in a lot but it is seldom what he is supposed to be doing.
He zones out. Doesn’t cause trouble but as a teacher told me a few years ago, I never realized how little he paid attention until you asked me to observe him. I asked her what he did. She said “he just sits there.”
Beth
Re: Differences between Girls and Boys with ADHD
Oh, he also hyper focuses but I see that also in the boy next door who has ADHD with hyperactivity.
Beth
The difference in ADHD is not in the sexes, but in the type of ADHD. There are 3 subtypes, hyperactive, inattentive and combined type. My dd is inattentive, more like what you describe with your dd, but with academic challenges, in the beginning. My dd just got all A’s and one B on her last report card and is in honors classes. She is still ADHD and still requires treatment. At the very least, you can be addressing the disorganization, set up a better dialog to help with the arguing, and a system to help her become less dependent on your reminders. All things that we have had to do, meds or not.