About 

Girls with ADHD are the forgotten ones. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my early 20s and only because my Spanish teacher (who was also the Dean) spotted the signs. I was double majoring in Psychology and Spanish, and Spanish was not going well. I had already been taking classes for 4 years at that point when this teacher pulled me aside, and said I had 2 choices: Withdraw from the major or get school accommodations. She explained that she was confident I had ADHD, and was shocked I was never diagnosed. She made it clear that my only chance of graduating was getting support because my natural coping skills for surviving a foreign language were no longer working. She also helped me navigate the entire college accommodations, and process of getting my formal ADHD diagnosis.

The truth is, if she had not believed in me so much I would have never made it through college! I discovered, through her support, that I have ADHD-combined type. But, like many girls with ADHD, I had learned a zillion ways to compensate for my struggles. Back in middle school I learned to color code EVERYTHING. Spanish was blue- blue notebooks, blue folders, blue ink, blue markers. Everything I wrote for Spanish was in blue because my brain learned many years prior that the only way I could remember things was to color code my classes. Science was green. History was purple. It all made sense in my brain. And that amazing Spanish teacher, she started printing all my assignments on blue paper! It was incredible.

Part of my ADHD was also being a perfectionist. I required 120% effort for pretty much everything. In high school, I averaged 5-6 hours a night of homework ( when classmates were done in 1-2). I also never went to sleep before 2am because I learned my Freshman year that I did my best work starting at 10pm. And the nights I wasn’t doing homework, I was gaming until closer to 4am. I mastered the no sleep method of ADHD because the sheer adrenaline of ‘getting away with it’ worked. By my Junior year of high school, I was competitive dancing 26+ hours a week, plus working about 15 hours a week. During the summer, I also coached a swim team from 7am-2pm. I was on hyperdrive. All the signs of ADHD were there, But no one noticed. Why? Well, I had a 3.86 GPA. Girls with ADHD have unique powers.

We often blend in by overachieving. Our anxious energy lets us complete the impossible. We compensate with high adrenaline activities and little sleep. My ADHD journey was intense and although I was never medicated- I used sleep deficit, high adrenaline activities and sugar to function… but I can promise that things would have been easier if I was diagnosed sooner. I was not an easy child to parent- my rejection sensitivity was intense and my attitude worse. But somehow we all survived it, and now my goal is to break that cycle for other families with overachieving ADHD kids, as well as those kids that haven’t yet reached their potential.