@RickiTarr a couple of random datapoints for you but my wife (afab) is diagnosed as the "boy" type of hyperactive adhd and my brother (amab)is the inattentive type which was actually described to him as the female type by the psychiatrist as an excuse for why it wasn't picked up before adulthood. I'm not any sort of expert but the fact the two people closest to me have the wrong gendered type makes me very sceptical of the idea of gendered presentation
@RickiTarr Purposefully dodging the question -- I think it's legitimate -- about gender-based diagnoses, I want to come at it from a slightly different angle.
ADHD is dramatically over-diagnosed. Not because the symptom isn't present, but because the symptom is regarded as a stopping point.
It's an "oh *THIS* is the problem!".
It's a "LET"S MEDICATE!!!"
In fact, ADHD is generally not a root cause. It's mostly a symptom.
We hammer kids w/speed, cuz it's easier than taking care of them.
Boys are expected to be loud.
Girls are expected to be quiet.
This is just what happens when we ask hyperactive kids to sit and listen without moving for 8 hours a day
I have three kids diagnosed with ADHD (still planning on getting myself tested, to explain why so many of my kids have it). Two boys and one girl. The girl was diagnosed first, but she's also the oldest. She was diagnosed at a later age, but I generally attribute that to us being better informed by the time our boys started showing symptoms.
It's also interesting to note that our second child has hyperactive type, and he was diagnosed later than the other two (including his younger brother), who both have inattentive type.
That strengthens my opinion that it was mostly about us being better informed. After our oldest was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD, it was easier to notice in our third child. Our second child took longer for us to see he had hyperactive type because, to us, he just seemed like a very active kid. He wasn't struggling with poor attention in school like his siblings. He was just constantly doing parkour in our living room. Even after being treated, he's still very active, but that activity is generally better focused.
Anyway, not sure my experience adds much to your query, but there is is anyway.
@RickiTarr I am the quiet reserved type of male ADHDer, unless I’m in my comfort zone.
@RickiTarr I was a boy with the "quiet" type of ADHD who wasn't diagnosed until I was 40 years old. I struggled with many things, especially anxiety that entire time.
It took one amazing therapist to recognize my symptoms and that was only because she had recently attended a seminar on the subject.
I hope diagnosis can continue to improve. I don't want anyone to go through what I did
:EA DATA. SF:I'm AuDHD and both were not diagnosed until well into my 40s.
All my elementary school report cards said things like, "very bright, talks too much."
I was smart, an extremely fast learner, eager to please my teachers, always moving and very fidgety, an avid and advanced reader, and a massive daydreamer who couldn't pay attention.
Still, I could follow through on things when they matched my current hyperfocus. For example, I researched, wrote, edited, designed, produced, and self-published an entire novel between highschool and my early 20s (in the mid to late 1990s). It's not very good, but I did it.
I thought I was a dude until I was 35. I've been on HRT taking feminizing hormones for more than a decade. My ADHD is probably more masculine than ever. My patience is shot and I get angry at people who don't keep up with my leaps in logic and make me slow down to explain. Now, I can barely complete projects even when I desperately want to finish them. I struggle to stay on task and I'm constantly overwhelmed.
@RickiTarr I would love to give you a comparison between my ADHD before and after estrogen, but mine was always the daydreamy one even before transition.
@RickiTarr me, a trans masc who didn't realize he was autistic until after 10 years of socializing as a man and people were like, 'hey you seem to have the tism': it's the patriarchy
@RickiTarr aye
‘ Entrenched’ -societal expectations
¿We can do better - -
https://storykate.com.au/critical-pedagogy-of-henry-giroux/
¿ADHD -is not a disease __
https://www.hunterinafarmersworld.com/p/the-science-finally-catches-up-new
¿America is ruled by faction
https://hartmannreport.com/p/americans-used-to-understand-public
@RickiTarr I'm reminded of Rosemary Kennedy who was lobotomized for being "increasingly irritable and difficult" at the age of 22 and then hidden from her family for 20 years until her father suffered a stroke and lost control of the family secrets.
@RickiTarr As a professional ADHD-haver, brain chemistry is a motherfucker. 'll absolutely do yer noodle in.
Five years ago I was finally diagnosed as an adult.
And a few years later, I realized I was a trans woman and started medically and socially transitioning.
But the way it manifested, even when I was a child, I was much more daydreamy than loud.
Which would seem to suggest that the answer is not hormones or society expectations, but rather brain structure.
@RickiTarr 😆 I don't think I had a single report card from any of my primary school teachers, that didn't include a complaint about me daydreaming in class.
The gender difference is mostly BS imo. I'm cis female and display all the "boyish" mannerisms of ADHD like the majority of other ADHD women I've talked to along with the "quieter" symptoms.
In men it's "confidence and vigor"
In women it's "loud and bitchy" even tho I'm acting and talking just like a man.
Hormones probably do affect it for some folks. I've never noticed a difference in myself during my cycle phases. It's always at 11.
@RickiTarr Final thought:
What neurotypical moron decided to call it ADHD???! I never identified or displayed as hyperactive, nor did I have a “deficit” of attention. On the contrary, I usually had a surfeit of it — all focused in one place with the intensity of a thousand suns.
4/4
@RickiTarr In my line of work sysadmin = fireman, which worked well for me because there was plenty of external stimulus and the permission to keep irregular hours in order to deal with whatever the latest disaster was.
Based on my own experiences, I suspect that Inattentive ADHD goes undiagnosed in men almost as much as in women, but women suffer more because our still-very-patriarchal medical community is biased against them.
3/x
@RickiTarr Like everything biological/psychological/societal, all of the above combined, plus some other stuff too.
I don't know the answer, but I do know girls often get slapped down early and hard if they dare to make waves. That's probably got something to do with it.
@RickiTarr High IQ + something like ADHD is sometimes called “2e” or Twice Exceptional, because the one makes the other. It worked for me until I went away to university, where the lack of structure compared to home+school was more than I could cope with and I flunked out, then returned, only to flunk out again. I ended up self employed as a programmer/sysadmin.
2/x
@RickiTarr I’m a white cis-het middle-aged male with inattentive “girl” ADHD that went undiagnosed until just a couple of years ago. I’m also above average IQ (identified, in educational parlance), so my smarts were able to compensate for my failings; I could never concentrate enough to do homework but I was almost always able to finish my work in class; I never took notes because it was too distracting but I was able to “hyper focus” on the lesson and memorize it.
1/x
@RickiTarr I love the fact how we casually strolled from "if you're on Mastodon" to ADHD 💕
@DoomHammerNG LOL I just feel like Mastodonites in general are more aware of anything under the Neurodivergent umbrella as well as the LGBTQ+ Umbrella.
@RickiTarr We had an active-social ADHD kid and an early reading, wishing well ADHD kid. I guess they have elements of each of our challenges.
@RickiTarr Misogyny is so entrenched here that it's incredibly difficult to tease out any legitimate differences of organic origin.
It could be an undeniable truth that all girls have 11 toes and we'd blame them for the pain caused by 10-toed shoes.
@RickiTarr A lot of the societal conditioning of *all* girls, including neurotypicals, is training what would be called "masking" in autistic circles. Neurodivergent girls have to work harder at the masking that all girls are socialized to do, but as you say, it also makes the neurodivergence harder to disentangle from just existing as a woman in a society which wants you to hide your real self.
🖖@RickiTarr I am a daydreamy AuDHD man. 🤣
@a You're so dreamy Aaron!
@RickiTarr @MelissaBearTrix as a male who was not diagnosed until his 50s…
The only sort of ADHD detected when I was growing up was the disruptive type. I was the bored/understood everything first time but kept making simple mistakes from lack of focus, style and no one ever suggested it might be anything but me just failing to focus on what I was doing.
And yes I was clearly intelligent so no one investigated what was happening
My wife's ADHD sometimes shows up as "DVD director's commentary" over the story she's telling. All over the place.
@RickiTarr oooh, being in an "ADHD household", can confirm there's differences.
My ex is suspected ADHD, she's definitely more dreamy, less hypo, as compared to how I used to be. We were discussing it yesterday as she had the urge to tell someone at work to stop breathing because it was like nails on a chalkboard, then realised this was unreasonable.
My daughter, she has the hyperactivity, but it's more in speech than actions, she's more forgetful and spaced out at times. My son is 100% action based ADHD.
I have no idea if I have ADHD, and I'm not really interested in knowing ... I have been told by "people" yes ... But anyway ... All my primary schools report "dreaming" a lot ... Giggles
And yes I have popped ritalin and I don't feel high, just felt refreshed
Hugz & xXx
once, my friend had a massive tumor in her chest.
but she didn't know for ~5 years til it almost killed her (she was rushed to the ER, MRI finally done, & they saw it).
bc for that entire 5 years, docs said her symptoms - sweating, palpitations, discomfort, were due to panic attacks, for which she was medicated.
girls & women get shortchged on health research (they used to not even bother w female animal models) & care at every turn. sadly, even women docs have treated me poorly.
@RickiTarr
Your body is the vessel that carries your life, all are different and all are flawed.
*Young Pirates who appear to be female dream of conquering the world while those that appear to be male dream of sailing the sea. So it was with the Pirate Princess and Prince.
With the grandlings it seams to be less a lack of attention and more a lack of care or concern for an old man's rambling.
Love All People
Love Yourself
I was diagnosed as lacking the "H". My defining characteristic is "I": impulsivity. So... ADID.
I know at least a few folks with ADHD diagnoses that turned out to have underlying autoimmune and/or inflammatory disorders.
@RickiTarr Just to be clear - the "H" in ADHD is Hyperactivity. So "...quieter and more daydreamy..." may be misleading. Either in diagnosis or speculation. True ADHD and ADD must meet a DSM criteria threshold for diagnosis. Self-diagnosis is frequently misguided. But, DSM is available for reference. Professionals are professionals for a reason.
@RickiTarr There are physical differences in the brain structure of men vs women. Not better or worse, of course, just different. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-myths/201207/two-myths-and-three-facts-about-the-differences-in-men-and-womens-brains)
I don’t doubt this is related to how ADHD and autism tend to present differently in women vs. men, although since it’s a complex condition to begin with, we may never know exactly why.
@RickiTarr @MamaLake as a trans man not diagnosed with ADHD until I was 33, and then transitioned about 5 years later - it's all of the above. I was a daydreamer as a "little girl", but that was my only method of escape. Everyone else took up all the oxygen.
On testosterone, I don't have hormones change who I am. But I can clearly see that my behavior would have been different as a child, because of gendered expectations.
Hormones amplify my urges, they don't create them, though.
@RickiTarr I know autism in girls is excused as "being particular" or "emotional" which pisses me off.
@RickiTarr I'm a cis male and I feel like I experienced bits of both (as described). But I know the feminine experience is highly under studied
I believe there is a huge societal aspect.
But I also believe there is a much bigger hormonal aspect than we realise at the moment.
Certainly I have noticed a difference in effectiveness of my meds that coincides with my monthly cycle and I believe it is now known (by scientists - women will have known for far longer) that in perimenopause symptoms can worsen.
@RickiTarr Two more points of data for you:
1) I'm nonbinary and was diagnosed with the "wrong" type of ADHD for my AGAB before puberty.
2) My butch presenting but straight cis sister wasn't diagnosed until later, but in retrospect she clearly had "boy" ADHD even as a toddler.
@RickiTarr Omg. I have so much thoughts. Hang on let me get my laptop
@RickiTarr Society. Before puberty girls and boys have the same hormone levels (except immediately after birth). The main loud and disruptive in ADHS boys happens already in primary school, so before puberty. During puberty a high percentage of ADHS boys actually gets better. (I think we don’t know for girls, yet.)
@RickiTarr my daughter has ADHD, inattentive type and only having her home during COVID school allowed me to figure it out, and I'm a psychologist. And it only fell on my radar after her father was diagnosed with the exact same type as an adult. Their neuropsychological evaluation profiles looks strikingly similar in terms of how their brains work, so genetics is clearly doing its thing here. She was diagnosed in 4th grade, so before puberty. I haven't noticed any shifts in how her ADHD presents with hormonal changes, but as her brain develops she does better with executive function and the like. Both of them take adderall and it works very well. In terms of why the school missed it, absolutely she was more daydreamy and not traditionally hyperactive. But she struggled socially and was bullied. In retrospect it all made sense to me, but while going through it I didn't immediately suspect ADHD at all.
@RickiTarr Maybe it has a bit more to do with a specific portion of childhood? I was not exactly a rowdy or boisterous kid myself, but I certainly did have plenty of energy at specific points. For the most part mine has manifested as "quiet and dreamy" though. I'm wondering if it might come down to those specific points being just more recognizable at those specific times. But, then again, maybe it is just more extreme. I can't remember as well anymore, but I suspect my sister joined me in ADHD and we both did a lot together at various times and didn't at various other times.
Come to think of it, on the society side, what if it's different levels of supervision? It's harder to notice someone's free actions when they are less free to act freely after all...
@RickiTarr I don't know I feel somehow targeted by statements like this.
I think my ADHD went undiagnosed because I was quieter and more daydreamy about it than the kid at my summer camp who was hyperactive to the point where there was no way you couldn't know he had ADHD, even before ADHD diagnosis was really a thing.
I think it's more of a "we don't understand how ADHD manifests in the middle of the curve, only at the extreme ends."
Wait, i did not know there was a different presentation in girls and boys. Where can i learn more about this?
@RickiTarr I watched a clip this morning talking about how only white boys were studied and how magically at 16 their ADHD was to disappear.
2008 ADHD wasn't even considered in adults.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/25672289549028457
Also it was menopause when my hormones fucked off and masking the mess underneath was too much. Then with all the info in the last few years the penny dropped that I'm likely very neurodivergent.
@RickiTarr I think about the kinds of ADHD now identified--inattentive vs hyperactive vs combined. I wonder if inattentive is for some reason more common in girls? Hyperactive is easier to see, and so tends to get noticed, diagnosed, treated. Of course there is the larhe other dimension of medicine traditionally ignoring women, but I wonder if this isn't also a factor.
@RickiTarr I think societal factors really are huge here. There is just a lot of behavior that society will accept from boys/men that it won't accept from girls/women so the latter has to get very good at hiding these things.
@RickiTarr "societal expectations" cannot be underlined enough with differences between boys and girls.
I'm assuming, if you're on Mastodon, that you know ADHD in girls in massively underdiagnosed, because it tends to be quieter and more daydreamy in girls and more loud and disruptive in boys.
This makes me wonder how much of this is hormonal vs just societal expectations for girls vs boys, or a combination of both or another thing entirely.
Anyway, share your thoughts.