While girls generally mature faster than boys, girls with ADHD experience significant lags in social and emotional maturity compared to non-ADHD peers. Many girls with ADHD tend to be hyper-talkative, hyper-social, and hyper-emotional, rather than hyperactive.
ADHD in Girls: Recognizing Key Symptoms
daydreaming quietly in class. feeling anxious or sad. exhibiting silliness or apparent ditziness. acting shy or inattentive.
The emotional and social fallout of ADHD can be very serious. Girls with ADHD sometimes struggle to make and keep friends. Many also experience low self-esteem, depression or anxiety.
ADHD symptoms
Inattentive only: The person has difficulty paying attention but does not tend to be disruptive. Hyperactive and impulsive: A person's hyperactive and impulsive behavior can cause disruptions. Combined inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive: The person has all the above symptoms.
A girl with ADHD may have impulsivity and be hyper-talkative. She may be verbally impulsive, interrupt others, talk excessively, or change topics repeatedly during conversations. She might even blurt out words without thinking about their impact on others. Girls with ADHD can also be overly sensitive.
Put simply; masking is intentionally shifting your behavior to hide your differences. For example, a woman with ADHD might smile and nod during a conversation even though she tuned out long ago, or she may secretly work late into the night to overcompensate for not staying on task for a deadline.
Research is showing that the symptoms of ADHD often intensify for girls during puberty when estrogen increases in their bodies.
The signs of ADHD in girls are more likely to look like inattention than hyperactivity. Girls with ADHD often don't fit the stereotype of excessive energy. Instead, they have a hard time paying attention, staying organized, and managing their time. People might mistake girls with ADHD for just being spacey or lazy.
Girls with ADHD are significantly more likely to experience major depression, anxiety and eating disorders than girls without.
Hyperactive and impulsive girls sometimes have trouble taking turns or not getting their way. They might be too loud and aggressive, or just seem immature to other girls their age. All these things make them more likely to face rejection from their peers.
“Challenges with processing emotions start in the brain itself. Sometimes the working memory impairments of ADHD allow a momentary emotion to become too strong, flooding the brain with one intense emotion.” Thomas Brown, Ph.
With high expectations and pressures to perform and act a certain way, girls can experience more perceived impairment in their social relationships. Additionally, emotional lability or shifts in mood are common in kids with ADHD.
To discipline a child with ADHD, try to set your child up for success. Break down complicated tasks into small, actionable steps. Encouragement is helpful so stay positive. Try to let smaller infractions go as you focus on the larger goals.
Similar to the hyperactive symptoms, impulsive symptoms are typically seen by the time a child is four years old and increase during the next three to four years to peak in severity when the child is seven to eight years of age.
Sometimes, the way a child's ADHD presents can change in their teenage years. The symptoms might become more noticeable and more challenging, so it's common for ADHD to be diagnosed while a young person is going through puberty.
With girls, inattentive ADHD is the most common.
Symptom differences between girls and boys
These hyperactive/impulsive symptoms get noticed more easily by parents and teachers while inattentive symptoms sometimes get ignored. Girls are also less likely to be diagnosed earlier because they often display more symptoms of anxiety.
Fact: Children with ADHD may do their best to be good, but still be unable to sit still, stay quiet, or pay attention. They may appear disobedient, but that doesn't mean they're acting out on purpose.
There are some women with ADD who have successfully compensated for their ADD, but the price they pay is to expend most of their waking energy combating their natural tendency to be disorganized. Many women with ADD feel a powerful sense of shame and inadequacy. They feel constantly behind, overwhelmed and frazzled.
Anecdotal evidence from adults sharing ADHD stories online suggests that many experience brain fog, low motivation, and fatigue. Tiredness is not part of the official diagnostic criteria for ADHD , but a handful of studies do suggest that some people with ADHD experience fatigue.
However, in adulthood, the number of men and women with ADHD is much more similar (5.4% for males compared with 3.2% for females). Studies suggest that females may be nearly as likely to have ADHD as males, but because their symptoms may look different, they are being diagnosed later or not diagnosed at all.
One type of ADHD masking — known as mirroring — involves intentionally or unintentionally mimicking the speech, movements, or behaviors of someone else. While ADHD mirroring and body doubling may seem similar at first glance, you can work alongside a body double without imitating them in any way.