Why Applying What We Know About Neurodivergent Boys Does Not Always Work For Girls
by Teresa Currivan, LMFT
Understanding Neurodivergent girls, especially those who are also gifted, is one of the most overlooked areas in psychology and education today. While we’ve made some progress in recognizing ND traits in boys, I believe we’re missing the mark almost entirely with girls.
First, let’s understand neurodiversity
The field of Neurodiversity is still new. I stumbled into it when my own child had challenges in school despite being a precocious toddler. I took him to every professional imaginable, entered the gifted homeschooling community, and became a writer, advocate, school therapist, and parent coach and consultant locally and internationally. I continue to learn. I’ve seen many diagnoses assigned to the neurodivergent – some that appear more accurate than others. We are all still learning. I have developed a way to begin to understand neurodivergent learners.
Within any particular neurodivergent individual are specific traits that impact each other. Examples of neurodivergent traits can be: ADHD, highly creative learning style, highly relational, highly sensitive (HSP), visual-spatial, sensory processing issues, such as auditory processing issues, etc. It is important to understand each of these individual traits fully and accurately before moving on to understand any given student’s learning style or neurodivergence. For example, if we misunderstand ADHD and then apply that misunderstanding to my method, the end result will most likely be slightly off or a complete misunderstanding of the child. One very common issue is that when auditory or visual processing issues are not first detected, the full understanding of reading and language issues cannot be fully understood, as many sensory issues can be either fully or partially resolved, and once ruled out, then issues such as dyslexia and language can be properly assessed.
Understanding each of these traits accurately is the key, and we aren’t there yet. So understanding how they co-occur is yet another level we have yet to reach as professionals who want to both diagnose children and understand how they learn.
So, needless to say, while we are still figuring out neurodivergent boys, what about the girls?
How neurotypical girls are wired differently: what we know (and don’t know) so far.
Women have learned the language of men, have lived in the house of men. You know when you learn language? You learn French, you learn Spanish? It isn’t your language until you dream in it. And the only way to dream in it is to speak it. And women speak men. But men don’t speak women. They don’t dream in it.
Meryl Streep as Interviewed by Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday, Dec. 14, 2017, posted on YouTube. Skip to 11:15 for this quote.
Studies
#1. In a study published in PubMed entitled “Understanding Female and Male Insights in Psychology: Who Thinks What”, the authors show that females:
think holistically,
have higher sensitivity, and therefore, knowledge of feelings
have higher sensitivity to nuances in hearing, and this, combined with emotional sensitivity, allows them to pick up on more social nuances than men
have a wider focus on relationship building
Express anger verbally rather than physically
Place a higher importance on the motivation of actions rather than actions alone (pmc.ncbi.nim.hih.gov/articles/PMC11039442)
What I find the most interesting about this study, as I apply the information to the gifted and neurodivergent population, is that all of these traits are signifiers of neurodivergent and gifted boys already. I think there is a lot to discuss there, but since we are on the topic of girls, I would like to propose that gifted and neurodivergent girls are more likely to be even more extreme in these areas but at the same time, by high school, become very adept at hiding their learning traits. Perhaps more so than boys. For example, the communication style of the student I present, below, is sometimes welcome in the one-on-one therapy setting where I meet with students, while presenting a challenge in the classroom setting. Even with the most patient of teachers. Most girls will have learned to look like everything is fine, they internalize their struggles, while the boys generally have outward behaviors pointing to their struggles.
#2. I have not yet seen evidence that we have studied girls and women successfully, whether to understand women educationally, medically, or psychologically. As an example, it has long been known that most clinical trials of drugs are tested primarily on men, even when they are drugs for women. Here is an excerpt from one study on the topic,
“ For decades, biomedical researchers excluded women from clinical trials, assuming that women and men experience conditions and treatments identically. And for decades, we’ve known that isn’t true. Women differ from men in the prevalence, symptoms, and response to treatments for many health problems.
From 1997-2000, eight of the 10 drugs taken off the market posed a more serious risk to women than men. In 2013, the FDA cut the recommended dosage of the sleep aid Ambien in half for women — 21 years after it was approved — because women absorb the drug differently than men and wake up the next day at greater risk for accidents.” (Yale School of Medicine, Jan. 13, 2016.)
#3. Because I have found that understanding the gifted mind is crucial to understanding the nuerodivergent mind for both genders, it’s important to understand what has happened in the past regarding studies in the field of gifted psychology in the past century or so. We now know that the studies we have on giftedness come from men who were deemed gifted after the fact – the geniuses who produced something big and significant and then died: think Einstein, DaVinci, Jobs, etc – so not only were we missing men who had high potential and may not have produced something helpful for society perhaps because they struggled in school, we were missing girls and women completely.
While Leta Stetter Holligworth performed and published some very thorough studies of highly to profoundly gifted children in the early 20th century, over time, her studies were ignored in favor of trying to understand these geniuses mentioned above, so that the field replicated the idea of the male high achiever who somehow made it through school. Leta Hollingworth died early, and although she published her studies, those in the field of gifted psychology are just now beginning to return to her way of learning the deeper complexities of giftedness in the way that she understood them, over 100 years later: the studies were there, but we couldn’t yet see their value. High achievement does not always equal giftedness; in fact, learning differences are more common the more highly gifted an individual is.
Going Off On Tangents – A Case Study
*Cassie was a 9th grader when I first met her. She presented as a bit flat emotionally and said that she “didn’t really care about school.”
Her mother and her teachers were worried because she had previously been a straight-A student. It seemed to happen suddenly, toward the end of 7th grade, that she lost interest. It seemed abrupt and without any apparent cause.
Cassie told me that she used to love school. She loved being there with her friends and accomplishing a lot in her classes. She was proud of herself, although she admitted she was becoming a bit bored with it all, but also worried because her grades were dropping off.
Her mother and teachers assumed, and feared, that her depression was causing her downfall in grades, barely passing some of her 9th-grade classes. Toward the end of the term, her mother and teachers were outright anxious about her situation. She was at risk of failing a few classes, which would mean falling behind. Falling behind in high school has major implications in parents’ and teachers’ minds, not only for graduation, but for potential college options and beyond. College had always been the plan. To say that the heightened anxiety was palpable is an understatement. The more the grown-ups worried, the more anxious and depressed she was becoming.
I later found out that toward the end of 8th grade she had begun self-harming behaviors. By the end of her first term in 9th grade, we conducted a suicide assessment and made sure she had the support she needed.
As I worked with her and asked specifically about her school assignments that she felt were challenging, I would find that she came to life (cheered up) eventually when discussing the topic of various subjects, be they literature – a classic novel she needed to read for an English class, or the various elements of mitochondria for Biology. What I found was that she was learning a lot in her classes and could talk about what she was learning. The hard parts for her were the tedium, the detail of answering specific questions designed to test her knowledge, making sure there was no plagiarism, and that she first of all read the book or listened in class.
She was a doodler and a fidgeter. She had what I call a high psychomotor drive – someone who needs to either move while they are learning, or whose minimum amount of exercise each day in order to feel normal is more than what typical learners need. She was also highly creative. Highly creative learners often need to apply their knowledge and ask more questions with the knowledge that is already integrated in their mind in order to continue to learn. Answering questions designed only to test knowledge can, especially over time, begin to feel deadening to this type of learner. Additionally, what I noticed is that she is very feminine thinker: I don’t know how else to write about this at this point in time, but when she gets into the flow of a topic, has permission, does not feel judged, and has someone to bounce ideas off of, she can seem to “go off on a tangent.” I allow tangents: I have the luxury of working with students one-on-one, where the goal is mental health, not education. But I think many teachers who have the time and understand this way of thinking know that, for some learners, this is where the good stuff is. A learner like Cassie might think of something about a classic novel that applies to today’s world in an entirely different way that is not taught. She may be shy about even bringing it up. These are also the students who might lead us into new ideas in science or any area in the future, should their learning style be supported and not shut down. The shutting down is where we see the depression and anxiety. Without our help and our understanding, they are confused and don’t have an outlet for their intellect or creativity, at least not at school.
While there are many boys who fit a similar profile, I think that girls are shutting down more silently. Additionally, many have a talking and learning style that is more collaborative and rests on a web of various connections and ideas that we don’t fully understand yet. As Meryl Streep said, “Men don’t understand the language of women,” but the task of women is to figure out how to fit our thinking style – to find the language to communicate in the world. That’s a fair assignment, but let’s at least name this and understand it when diagnosing and helping neurodivergent and gifted girls.
*Name and some facts have been changed to protect the students – “she” is a combination of typical neurodivergent girls I see in my practice.
ADHD Is Another Common Misdiagnosis For Girls
I’m taking us all into the weeds a bit here, so click here if you are a professional or a parent who enjoys the minutiae; you may find this helpful. ADHD Is Another Common Misdiagnosis For Girls
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Most importantly, let’s remember that girls are complex. They are wired to fit in, and many who are neurodivergent or gifted often become gifted at fitting in. This is not always a bad thing, but because they often defy definition, let’s not find a diagnosis and make it fit. Let’s get comfortable with not knowing as we stay open to beginning to understand our neurodivergent girls. Let’s embrace the complex learning styles and individuals they are, and be more open to various ways of being in the world. The world needs our neurodivergent learners – all of them – at this time.
Teresa Currivan is an author, mother, licensed marriage and family therapist, school therapist, coach, and consultant for individuals and parents at Help My Child Thrive Coaching. She developed The Currivan Protocol™ Qualitative Assessment Tool to assess and address co-occurring issues in neurodivergent students. This has been popular in her private practice and she has adapted it for use in public and private schools. She is the author of the book, My Differently Tuned-In Child: The Right Place for Strength-Based Solutions. Teresa has been published on sites such as Mother.ly, Filter Free Parents, and is a blogger at GHF and Hoagies Gifted Education and is a contributing author to the GHF Press book, “Perspectives on Giftedness.” Teresa has connections to San Francisco Bay Area schools such as Fusion Academy, Big Minds Unschool, The Academy of Thought and Industry, and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD.) She works with schools and families in the San Francisco Bay Area and globally.
If you would like training for your school, an assessment for your child, or parent coaching, you can contact Teresa at TeresaCurrivan@gmail.com
HelpMyChildThrive.com 
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