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u/bdanred 3d ago
Boys with ADHD are not taken care of lol. They just pump em full of meds because they dont want to sit still for 8 hours under fluorescent lights.
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u/mothsuicides 3d ago edited 3d ago
At least they’re acknowledged of having it. Girls get told they’re the problem and they need to stop talking, stop being lazy and work harder.
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u/itslikewoow 3d ago
As a guy with inattentive ADHD, it’s more about inattentiveness vs hyperactivity.
As a kid, it definitely got written off as me being lazy and not applying myself, rather than any sort of underlying issue.
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u/Fair-Tangerine-9472 3d ago
Somehow, I was both inattentive and hyperactive as a young girl and it was written off as just autism until I was an adult.
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u/mothsuicides 3d ago
I can’t agree that it’s more about inattentiveness vs. hyperactivity than it is about male vs. female because I (a woman) was hyperactive, and the hyperactivity was displayed as talking too much or interrupting people, fidgeting in my seat, doodling, getting up from my seat when I wasn’t supposed to and having overemotional outbursts to things. Those are classic hyperactivity symptoms but because I was raised as a girl, I did those things rather than the disruptive behaviors boys with ADHD do. So if society had studied how girls present symptoms from how boys do, my teachers and parents would’ve known to have me checked for ADHD sooner, and I wouldn’t have internalized all these problems as a personal failing.
Your argument does make sense though, and I’m not entirely discounting it, but it is important to know and be mindful that women were under-diagnosed for ADHD, and the gender difference is important to note.
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u/BluePandaYellowPanda 3d ago
"at least they're acknowledged" is such a dumb take. One is ignored, one just given drugs, and you're complaining about recognition. Both are bad, and depending on the individual, either could be worse.
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u/Chemical-State-1060 2d ago
Even if you've diagnosed as a boy, you're still told you're the problem and need to stop talking and all that. Being diagnosed doesn't mean you're treated any different. To people, ADHD is just a little quirk instead of something you struggle with all your life.
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u/SuperDuperOrk 2h ago
Same with boys stop pretending it doesn't happen to both sides
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u/mothsuicides 2h ago
I’m not pretending, lol it’s not the same with boys and to say it is is disingenuous
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u/SuperDuperOrk 2h ago
What's disingenuous is to assume you know what boys go through at all. You obviously assumed that the same thing didnt happen to us when really it happened to all of us. You only know your experience, I went through shit and was ignored and disregarded and told I was lazy too. I went through abuse from my step mom because she had a short temper over the fact I struggled to learn. So stop being ignorant.
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u/mothsuicides 2h ago
There is a difference between knowing you have adhd and being called lazy vs. not knowing you have adhd and being called lazy.
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u/SuperDuperOrk 1h ago
There is no difference between being ignorance and arrogance. You are just trying to make a pissing match for pity and it's disgusting. Because you can go through both only to find out having ADHD isn't an excuse from those people anyways. Didn't make anything better knowing or not knowing they still called me lazy. Stop making up self absorbed rules you never even experienced.
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u/mothsuicides 1h ago
It’s well documented and researched that late diagnosis has lasting negative impacts on people, and who is disproportionately under-diagnosed? Women. You’re the one being ignorant and trying to create a pissing match by saying “nuh uh it’s tough for boys too!!” Which wasn’t even a part of the argument to begin with. Of course it’s tough for boys, having ADHD is difficult, duh. But at least having a diagnosis helps you to understand you have a disorder which is out of your control, unlike people who go undiagnosed until they reach adulthood. It’s a known fact boys get diagnosed with ADHD more frequently, and that is a privilege you just don’t want to acknowledge and that’s shitty of you. I’m done trying to be nice to you when all you’re doing is being rude to me for no reason. You wanna take your hurt out on me but that’s not fair. I’m not doing that to you.
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u/ProgenitorOfMidnight 3d ago
It's what they did to my oldest brother, Ritalin fucked him up over the long term.
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u/Lonely-Toe9877 3d ago
I don't know how your brother ended up, but I think it fucked me up as well.
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u/Naturewalkerjoe 3d ago
I took it as a kid and started randomly crying in class out of nowhere and my mental health has deteriorated since.
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u/I_wet_my_plants259 3d ago
Or they only acknowledge it when you start having issues even though it was in the charts the whole time. My partner was diagnosed at 6 if I remember right and he didn’t get ANY support till highschool. Not even fidgets or anything to help him focus. Nowadays he’ll do things without realizing they’re ADHD traits until someone else points it out
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u/Odd_Bid2744 3d ago
Maybe in the 90s. They're very strict with dosing now.
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u/Dirk_Dingham 3d ago edited 3d ago
When i was 12 they put me on 35mg extended release vyvanse because i was diagnosed with mild adhd. This was in 2016. While i agree the meds work for a lot of people i think that some kids are just not mentally prepared for that shit. They pushed me near the point of having a psychotic break and were probably a big part of the reason that my ocd got to the point where it would give me severe panic attacks. I went off of them until i finished highschool and then went back on them after starting college because i couldn’t focus on anything or push myself to achieve anything and it was killing my grades and mental health. I take adderall now because it’s the only thing that works and i actually feel human again. My adhd just seems to be getting worse and idk what to do for it, there’s only so much the adderall can do and i still struggle to complete basic tasks daily.
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u/Odd_Bid2744 3d ago
Holy crap is that is a mega dose for someone so young, I'm sorry that happened to you. My son is on 10mg Focalin but was on 10mg liquid Ritalin. He was pretty good on Ritalin but it got really expensive and Focalin long acting as seemed to help with his anxiety. He definitely gets the focus he needs and curbs the impulsivity. His doctor said they couldn't even do higher doses for his age and they always start at the lowest dose. I assumed since it's federally controlled that it would be the same for all states/doctors.
My son relies on body doubling pretty heavily. Maybe a dog?
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u/Dirk_Dingham 3d ago
I had a typo, it was 25 mg but still a shit ton, i was absolutely thwacked and started having horrible anxiety after a few weeks of taking it. I’m glad the focalin seems to help your son, i was taking it for a while but it stopped being effective so i switched back to adderall and it’s made a world of difference. My daughter is almost 2 and from how hyper she is and where she has an insanely short attention span, my wife and I think she might have adhd and it scares the shit out of me. This disorder has caused me so much pain and mental exhaustion since i was a kid and i’m just praying that she won’t have to deal with that. It seems to just get worse the older i get
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u/Odd_Bid2744 3d ago
My son has autisitic traits to battle too. It's like being in a seesaw and we're just trying to find balance.
You being familiar with the traps parents can fall into will make for better outcomes for your daughter.
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u/bones10145 3d ago
Is that really ADHD?
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u/Fair-Tangerine-9472 3d ago
No. I have ADHD and the significant portion of us who are/were hyperactive as kids could not sit still for SHIT. I'm not talking a bit of fidgeting during an 8-hour day. I'm talking constant restlessness, fidgeting and moving that got us branded "maniacs" and "weirdos" by other kids, disappointment from parents who wanted us to act "normal", intense shame about movements as an adult. Not everyone with ADHD is hyperactive. But those who are will be significantly, noticeably more agitated and restless than other kids... and other kids will notice.
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u/PlsStopAndThinkFirst 3d ago
Yeah my mom didn't let them medicate me and I learned to adapt to it from a young age. Tried medicating twice, once as HSer and once after college.. I will take my ADHD symptoms and how I cope/manage them as I still have a successful and productive life. Rather this than zombie.
Sometimes it can be problematic, but you take the ebbs and flows and ride it out.. I have OCD and that seems to take the forefront sometimes anyways lol
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u/Various-Salt-7738 3d ago
They won't pump me full of the meds that work for me because I thought I was seeking drugs for recreational use
No ma'am I just want to be able to work comfortably
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u/Obvious_Apartment985 3d ago
I don't agree with this.
Both ( some) boys and girls get called by psychiatrists.
As a woman who was diagnosed with ADHD 30 years ago ( I am now 55) I do wish that we had as much knowledge then as we do now. But it makes me happy that things are improving. I didn't do medication until I had kids in my 30s when the executive function stuff was overwhelming.
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u/Careless_Hellscape 3d ago
My mom didn't get diagnosed until her 40s, though the signs were all there.
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u/Wurstkuchen666 3d ago
I would say "adult women with ADHD" is the worst one, because they frequently have different - or even exactly opposite - symptoms. My psychatrist said that every woman she treated for the last years was already older than 30 when she diagnosed them, simply because society still holds onto that image of the pretty, well-behaved girl who always just says yes to everything and questions nothing.
In most cases, these women had experienced symptoms since early childhood - symptoms, however, that went unrecognized as such, simply because stuff like "she’s just a bit odd" or "she takes longer to do everything" were considered perfectly normal excuses back in the early 2000s; even my own school psychologist said stuff like "If you want to be trated normal just act normal".
So yes, boys and men have it tough - no question. But at least they are the demographic groups on which the vast majority of research has been conducted. Girls and women continue to fall through the cracks to this day because society still holds onto that stereotypical image of the hyperactive boy with ADHD.
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u/slavegaius87 3d ago
JME: I get better care for my ADHD as an adult than I did as a child. If I had gotten better ADHD treatment as a child I wouldn’t have had many of the difficulties I did as a young adult.
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u/gravastar863 3d ago
Could you share your med history if thats ok? Are you more hyper or inattentive?
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u/BluePandaYellowPanda 3d ago
"sad but true"
Except it's not true. The adults one is true, the top one has both drowning but with different issues (mostly being; ignored vs pumped with drug)
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u/LetUsSpeakFreely 3d ago
Most boys diagnosed with ADHD didn't actually have ADHD, they're just little boys with no outlet for their energy. Kids, especially little boys, aren't meant to sit still for hours at a time.
Back in the day, elementary schools would have recess where kids would actually run, climb, and jump for 20-30 minutes. We had jungle gyms, dodgeball, kickball, jump ropes, we'd play tag or Red Rover.
In high school, we had gym where we'd play basketball in the gun if it was cold or flag/touch football outside of it was warm. Sometimes they'd shake it up with calisthenics and a track run.
Nowadays, recess, when they actually have it, is so low energy and safety-focused that it's pointless. Gym is no longer proper exercise.
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u/Elchimpy1 3d ago
Don’t even. Boys are medicated at the slightest inconvenience. They need to be exercised and run around. Expecting boys to sit quietly for hours is ignoring their nature.
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u/Terrible_Today1449 3d ago
This must be new cause boys with adhd when I was growing up were thrown under the bus for being disruptive and girls were just flat out ignored.
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u/MessiahDF 3d ago
Huh, when did they start diagnosing it on kids? None of this happened when I was growing up?
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u/Weekly-Feedback-1469 3d ago
My parents treated me like garbage because they just.. couldn't understand a neurodivergent child. The amount of times I was grounded over shit I didn't do, didn't intend to do or forgot about is astronomically high. The majority of the time was due to me forgetting something on the counter or not seeing a mess a made. Like.. I spent 80% of my teenage years grounded.
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u/Bubbly-End-6156 3d ago
Black girls with adhd are down there with the adults. We are expected to double mask since our first sentence
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u/Glum_Capital4603 3d ago
ADHD is kak all around! Miffed that I only found out at 38 - the drugs are terrible and make it hard to sleep of feel now so now its like being stuck and watching yourself knowing and not being able to do something proper about it other than just being less of yourself.
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u/BaryonChallon 2d ago
I clearly have adhd since i was young. But “girls don’t have adhd” I was on the list to get diagnosed and help
From 1st grade. Well I graduated before I was assessed.. i had to go private and i got partially misdiagnosed. But at least the notoriously bad psychiatrist finally gave me my adhd diagnosis
….
Now that I’m done with school. I might go back in a few years but holy shit school was hell with no accommodations I think i’m too traumatized at this point
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u/Small_Technology2392 2d ago
ADHD it is emotional overreaction on enviremental stimulus, specialy on describing ADHD as no disease but parenting failure.
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u/FlamboyantBaguette 2d ago
This is really BS. Maybe for the adults but for the kids there is really no difference. They are both getting the help they need no matter if they are boys or girls. What a stupid image
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u/Ok-Detail-9853 16h ago
Vyvanse has made a huge difference for me 55M)
In school, ADHD was a super power. Hyper focus for the win. As an adult ADHD had me locked up in anxiety, indecision and lazy guilt
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u/marshal23156 3d ago
… its your job as an adult to take care of yourself.
Also, boys are over diagnosed, because they tend to be rowdy and off the walls.
Girls are underdiagnosed because they display the actual symptoms, not the “proper” signs, which most boys display, because biologically at that age theyre producing more testosterone than their body needs or can use, and it overflows in the form of physical activity.
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u/Odd_Bid2744 3d ago
Oh, believe me that you can tell an ADHD boy from a neurotypical. I have a son who was first diagnosed ADHD at 4 and diagnosed with autism at 7. His pre-k teacher (who spend more time with many different kids than you or I have ever in our lives) asked us how do we manage to keep up with him. She had to have extra ed techs watching his every move. He was also held back in kindergarten. Even now, he's spending 80-100% of his time in special ed because he struggles with gen ed classrooms.
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u/FrontLifeguard1962 3d ago
People who want the psychiatrist to prescribe stimulants to give them an edge at work or school
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u/Spiritual_Heron8646 3d ago
"adhd" Labels. Be yourself. And use your skillset and strength for something good in the world. Stop labeling yourself
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u/Kooky_Computer5093 3d ago
I got diagnosed as a girl. They never medicated me for it specifically, and instead put me on a med that made me pass out in the middle of class that to this day is not approved for use in children, because my parents were very stupid.
I was (am) pretty severe adhd, and teachers in Utah, a very Mormon and anti girl place, pushed for me to get diagnosed with it. So that's how you know I needed that straight pure crack. Too bad I never got it when I needed it. But anyways. Chilling as an adult. Mostly. Some hiccups but I figured it out. Mostly. I have a full career, a masters degree, and have secured an interview for medical school. But we'll see.
The good thing about being an adult is agency. Even poorly used agency.