Talk to me about ADHD particularly girls

[Waitingforsleep]

I'm wondering if I have missed what could be ADHD for my Dd , can anyone chat about this or their experiences of particualry a girl or mild ADHD / inattentive ADHD?

Marking my place here as I've a 7 year old daughter who I suspect has the same. Too tired to add details now, but will later.
Have an assessment with an educational psychologist next week.

Just chipping in here because there are fewer girls diagnoses than boys.
My DD1 was diagnosed at 6... after the school asked if she could be referred. They felt she was 'bright' but couldn't focus long enough to do any work ..basically a non stop chatty, impulsive funny and infuriating child with the attention span of a gnat and constantly fidgeting, on the move. Zero organisational skills.

She went on Ritalin (and melatonin as she never slept..never had as a baby either) and we tho we were reluctant (partly as she never ate either and was very very thin) but it was , for her, a magic bullet.
She stayed on it til she was 14 , came off it for a few years then went back on it before A levels.
Still a disorganised, impulsive person with the fastest speech of anyone I know... but... at 6 years old she announced to the diagnosing paediatrician that she was going to be a doctor...

And she is :) She's 25 now... and an adult with AD(H)D. The ritalin has allowed her to focus enough to use her brains, and her hyper speed mind and ability to keep going has been an asset throughout her medical training... she has passed every stage with flying colours and patients love her friendliness, her ability to think of 100 things at once!

She is still medicated (and still very thin ..that never changed) but in many ways her ADHD is what has made her who she is.

Just thought I'd chuck that out as a (hopefully) positive thought :)

(She still drives me NUTS when she comes home mind... disorganised, scatty, motormouth!)

Hi, well my dd has spectrummy features as well as the ADHD. She makes friends easily though and is generally regarded as the life and soul of a party and is extremely loud.

For her age, though she's emotionally immature. We have screaming fits at bedtime at the moment. She needs a lot of help to get dressed still and she will forget which clothes she needs to put on. So for school she will put crocs on and at the weekend will be putting her school shoes on

OTOH she's just started dancing and is loving that. She seems to be learning all the work every week. So I think she can concentrate better than at one time. Until this year I don't think she could have concentrated.

Hello, I'm back again. I find it hard to articulate how my daughter is. The main things is she doesn't really engage in school i.e. refuses to join in, and won't let the teachers do focussed work with her, not answer questions etc. Its been like this since reception and now she's in Year 2. We changed her school a few months ago hoping a new school would change things for the better, but it hasn't it. She loves reading and gets lost in books but struggles more with writing. She's very bright but seems immature for her age. She started to describe herself as stupid. last night she says eh gets easily distracted at school and when I asked if this is why she sometimes didn't join in i.e. that she had been distracted so hadn't realised what was going on, she said yes. At home it's a nightmare getting her out the door in the morning, as we have to keep pushing her to get ready - she might have gone upstairs 30 minutes ago to get dressed and when you go up she's half undressed playing with something. Also it can be a struggle at the weekends getting her to leave the house for an outing - she might have tantrums then. She can really focus for ages on things she's comfortable with or interested in like reading, or cutting out paper cats for example but I often find I have to repeat myself to her, and she's always saying "what was that?" after I've said something to her. I'm always having to state her name a couple of times to get her attention and repeat myself. When we get to school, I have to remind her to unbuckle herself and get out of the car, and might have to repeat that often before she does it, whereas I notice other kids just tumble out quickly. Everything seems slightly delayed with her. On the other hand she can be a mile a minute, is very playful and loud, always interrupting us, laughing, dancing, swinging, so it's a confused picture. She's great with friends one on one but seems to struggle more in groups (there are exceptions to this though). She hasn't made friends in her new school and the other parents aren't helping by not agreeing to playdates, so contemplating moving her again....but afraid of the consequences for her self-esteem. She seems very isolated there. We are thinking of moving her back to her old school, which is what she wants to do, as at least she has friends there, but I'm not sure how much longer she'd have those friends given her behaviour is quite immature plus we're not very keen on the school! In one way I feel that much of how she acts is just how a 7 year old would act i.e. difficulty getting out the door to school, but the "not joining in" in school seems very different to the norm. We are having an educational psychologist report done next week. I'm really at sea with all this. Do you think it sounds like she may have ADHD? Does any of this ring a bell?

Sorry, I didn't do paragraphs!

Waiting did you find doctors to be particularly unhelpful? I spoke to one of our GPs last year, who is of the opinion that it probably wasn't ADHD, but that schools are "too lazy to teach difficult pupils and so pass the buck".....I kid you not!! It is her teacher at school who is organising the referal. She is the teacher in charge of SEN at school,as well as Year3 teacher, and so has been keeping an eye on dd. She believes dd to be one of the brightest in the class, but, as she just refuses to actually get on with the basics (spelling, reading the books they issue her with, homework....), she has ended up being placed near the bottom. At home she can read books from the library, such as Charlottes Web, at school she "forgets" words such as "them".
I am now banging my head against a wall!! She is obsessed with buying new stationary, but won't use them to do her homework.
Unfortunately, friends are difficult. There is only 8 girls in her class, and she seems to be always on the outside of the group. I even moved her to another Brownie group where the other girls go, instead of the one next to our house! Still hasn't helped. I think part of it is she doesn't seem to understand Personal Space, and can get a bit to "huggy"! She can be quite confused at times, one minute wanting to paint her nails and go clothes shopping.....the next she's playing with dolls. I have thought that maybe she's hormonal, as her mood swings remind me of PMT! She doesnt seem to have a problem organsisng herself in the morning...mainly because she likes to re-pack her bag every morning (stashing lip balms and anything sparkly!), and since she was a baby, she always wakes up at 6am, regardless of what time bedtime is. Oh, and she's constantly looking for food.....

Marking place if that's ok. My DD is exactly as described upthread but she's only 4, and also has mild CP which tires her out (well that with the 5am starts) so at the moment it's hard to say whether it's ADHD, a facet of the CP, or simply overtiredness and immaturity.

StillMedusa it's lovely to hear your story. DD wants to be a vet, funnily the only time she is calm and quiet is with animals. Maybe there's a chance!

I'm so glad I found his thread. My DD (8) is currently going through the whole diagnosis side of things for ADD/ASD and so much of what has been written before rings true for her.
She often forgets what she is supposed to be doing, frequently wanders off when she's supposed to be doing something else, bounces around all over the house (and bumps into everything as well) She is always spilling things, dropping things and falling over.
The phrase "Drama Queen" was made for her, as she over-reacts to the slightest thing, not helped by my eldest DD (13) who likes to wind her up constantly.
Re the ASD side of things, she refuses to wear certain types of clothes and is overly social - she will nearly always attach herself to someone else's family if we go to a park - particularly if they have young children.
Getting her to go to sleep at night is horrendous - usually 3 hours plus of her getting out of bed and then back in again, and out again, and in again.... until about 11pm, and then up bright and early at 5am!
The school and GP have been really good, and have done everything they can to get the referral through to the paediatrician, but even so, that's another 3 months for that appointment.....
Like Married - my DD is also always constantly hungry!!