Neurodovergent Girls and ADHD

ADHD Is Another Common Misdiagnosis For Girls

"As a common and specific example, more often than not, boys diagnosed with ADHD are often predominantly visual-spatial learners, so not understanding visual-spatial (holistic) learning is sometimes ok - they are put in the same box and addressing one can address the other, although not ideal. But due to this lack of understanding of the visual-spatial thinking and learning style, it has been misrepresented as ADHD. Because the female thinking style is closer to visual-spatial, many girls are, by default, being misdiagnosed with ADHD. This isn’t just about visual-spatial learners and ADHD- this same scenario can be applied to any neurodivergent trait. And because neurodivergent girls have not been studied or considered in developing diagnoses, this creates ample room for misdiagnoses for them.”

Are We Overdiagnosing Our Girls?

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.