“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.”

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.

 by Teresa Currivan, LMFT  If you are used to reading my articles, you will know that I specialize in assessing the neurodivergent and off-the-grid, so to speak, students. I use a system of traits that all impact each other, and try my best to explain how each one influenced the other: it is a wholistic …

Continue reading Are We Accurately Assessing Our Non-Verbal Students?

Lately, we have been taking the developing knowledge from areas such as autism, sensory processing disorders, giftedness, and more, to understand better those who are not neurotypical. It’s the dawn of a new age of understanding those who are wired differently than the norm. 

Let’s understand what is going on between some student’s ability to tell us what is in their head when they have read something, or even when they have learned something in class. This is a visual-spatial conundrum that we can easily get to the bottom of.