This Makes Me So Angry! How Can We Change the Future for Girls with ADHD if We Keep Saying, "It all works…until it doesn't"?

By Cynthia Hammer, MSW, Executive Director

Author of Living with Inattentive ADHD

"It all works…until it doesn't," in a recent article about ADHD in women made me see red. I wanted to shout at the author, "Your life wasn't working! It never worked for you, for any of us, until after our ADHD diagnosis and treatment!”

 Maybe you want to buy into the myth that you were doing fantastic in life, that ADHD didn't show up for you until middle school, high school, or college or when your life got more complicated, but you deny reality when you believe, "It all worked…until it didn't."

 You write, “I did well in school…. never understanding that my hours and hours of extra studying to get those grades wasn’t normal and an inability to fall asleep most nights was adolescent emotions. School and social life were hard, but I pushed through.”

 Is that "It all works...until it doesn't?" It sounds like, “It only worked because I put myself through hell."

 We are born with brains wired for ADHD, and it causes us trouble from the start. You and no one else recognized it, but it was there, causing havoc.

 We must stop agreeing that "It is more difficult to diagnose girls with ADHD than it is to diagnose boys, and this explains why girls continue to be under-diagnosed. "

 Perhaps girls go undiagnosed because no one has learned what to look for. How can a condition we are born with not be there? We just haven’t been taught how to recognize it. Saying, "It all works…until it doesn't," provides cover.  Why bother looking for it if it is not causing problems?

 If we want to change the future for girls with ADHD, women who did well in school and have pride in how successful they were, need to stop telling us, “It all works…until it doesn't."

 If they recognize that their lives weren’t "working" when they felt different, struggled to perform, ran late, and were disorganized, it puts the onus where it belongs---getting girls diagnosed much, much earlier in their lives.

 Females with ADHD shouldn’t be diagnosed when they confront menopause, start adulting, struggle in college, feel overwhelmed in high school, or feel lonely in middle school. They should be diagnosed in elementary school, and by second grade.

 Give girls with ADHD a great start in life. Equip them with an understanding of their ADHD brains. Diagnose them by second grade.