Please describe your daughter with ADHD

[Strawber]

My daughter is 10 and I've been thinking for a while that she may have ADHD, I know it can present differently in girls so was hoping those who have some experience could describe their own child

Same as me. Easily distracted, Olympic gold level messy, night owl, scarily clever, outside the box thinker, 300 open tabs in her brain at any time, plus at least 3 jukeboxes playing different music. Fidgets, quirky, struggles to focus when spoken to, changes subject randomly, interrupts, poor executive function, hyper mobile, sees the world very differently. Intuitive, very high EQ, can do most things within 20 mins (learned to drive a car at 12 in less than 30 mins).

My 9 year old DD has inattentive ADHD. She's disorganised. She has been described as "away with the fairies" by teachers. It is hard to get her to do "non-preferred tasks", but she will spend hours doing something she's engrossed in (hyperfocus). It can be hard to get her attention, so you end up repeating yourself lots, but she can find that annoying as it's hard to know when she's heard something. If you ask her to do something, she often forgets, or says you never asked. She finds it hard to fall asleep as her mind is buzzing with thoughts.

She does have lots of lovely qualities - a description of her adhd makes her sound annoying, but there's a lot more to her than her adhd.

This except for always learning skills quickly. Instead they are learnt instantly or take a painfully long time - it's always an extreme of the scale.
DD is also autistic so add in random special interests, bluntness, poor eye contact, numerous sensory issues, poor emotional regulation and a very literal interpretation of things around her (although she triumphantly announces when she's spotted that something has been said figuratively or 'gets' an idiom).
She needs an excessive amount of exercise to help balance her emotions and get her to sleep.
Her academic achievement is completely different from where you'd place her after chatting with her for a while (sounds like she's swallowed a dictionary, very good general knowledge including things like current affairs, well read, good problem solver etc etc), which is largely down to her hypermobility (hurts to write), poor attention, and poor working memory. However, now we know what we're dealing with, we have been able to put scaffolding in place to support this and her attainment is happily on the up.

Much of this.

For mine, (who is now a young adult) I'll add in

• gorgeous, funny
• hard working, but (academically) 'inefficient' due to inability to organise
• immense fear of missing out,
• generous, especially with her time
• incapable of organising herself timewise,
• very capable in so many ways but doesn't recognise that in herself,
• doesn't sleep much (never has, even as a baby, or even as a teen),
• when asleep is a very light sleeper and talks in her sleep including answering questions, often starts a conversation in the middle of it, without giving context
• yet has lots of weird dreams, which she remembers clearly
• sooooooooo messy
• lot of difficulty with things like tying shoelaces, or hanging something on a clothes hanger, although I suspect this is more the dyspraxia

My daughter hates clothes hangers! And squishy foods. And is so bloody hard on herself. :(

• Inattention
• Daydreaming
• Mind-wandering
• Fidgeting, constantly moving
• Difficulty completing schoolwork
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Anxiety
• Difficulty sleeping
• Procrastination
• Disorganisation
• Poor time management
• History of panic attacks

OP, all you need are your instincts.

The fact you've written this post screams to me that you're right.

I'm not sure how easy it is to access assessment on the NHS right now. I know autism assessments are very difficult to get and waits are long.

My request for my childs assessment was declined. I therefore borrowed to pay for an assessment. ADHD and Autism was diagnosed.

I'd start the ball rolling to get the assessment. Just knowing is so incredibly important.

When assessing, they will often look at the parents as this is most often genetically inherited.

SD probably has undiagnosed autism as well as ADHD which is diagnosed. Signs which led to diagnosis were:

• Destructive, always breaking, ripping, carving or taking things apart.
• VERY loud, not talking, constantly just making random sounds.
• Constantly moving, even in inappropriate situations, like standing on her head on her chair part way through a drum lesson, then doing a forwards roll and falling off the chair. Similar incidents were reported at school frequently.
• Young for her age, at 10/11 she was more like a 6/7 year old, lacking in independence or a desire for independence, struggling to manage her emotions or deal with ordinary things like losing a board game, choosing to play with baby toys and read picture books rather than things aimed at her age.
• Difficulties in friendships.
• No concentration span, even if you were directly speaking to her 1-2-1.
• Very creative and inventive, strong problem solving skills.
• Apathetic, no real interests, lacking in drive and direction.
• Lots of sensory issues around noise, clothes, water, smells, food, textures.
• Low pain threshold.
• Low self-esteem.
• Problems with personal hygiene, maybe because of sensory issues or executive function, but even now she still has to be coaxed and nagged to shower, brush her teeth etc.
• Underachieving in all subjects. After medication she has gone from average or below average in everything to coming top or second top in the year in her strong subjects- maths, science, geography and Spanish, so it was never an issue of intelligence.

My 13 year old daughter has both autism and inattentive ADHD.

She is an absolute and total delight. Funny and sweet and loving. She works hard at school and after a short spell on medication she decided that her 'brain has learnt to concentrate' so she took herself off medicine because 'it made her feel sad'. I think she's right because she's maintained her academic performance. She is currently trying to teach herself French. She gets ridiculously excited about 'special days', so right now, it's all about Halloween. She's never rude to me and she's so thoughtful.

Ok. So she loses alot of stuff, I tag what I can, label everything, insure expensive things (on our fifth phone!) and buy her cheap stuff which I can replace. She isn't organized (have a Whatsapp group for me, her and her dad, she puts stuff on immediately and we help her remember it). Often I have to tell her to do things multiple times, but she does genuinely just forget. But she's amazingly independent and capable. I try really hard to not get annoyed with her when she loses or forgets something because honestly, if she could be more careful, I really think she would be.

Honestly, she's incredible. Wouldn't change a thing about her. However, I work with children with autism and ADHD and I know how lucky I am. I am also very aware that she's more vulnerable (despite being so smart) and the risk of mental health difficulties in neurodiverse girls, so I do worry about burn out and overwhelm (especially as she likes to do so much).