How has this affected you and why? Please include any other diagnoses/co-morbids you feel have been affected as well.


Copied from another post I made here at ADDF:

Me--I have to admit that as a child I would have qualified for combined type due to the following:
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat.
Often gets up from seat when remaining in seat is expected.
Often talks excessively.
Often blurts out answers before questions have been finished.
Often has trouble waiting one's turn.
Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games).
Plus all the inattentive criteria.

I was also very much aware that I was highly intelligent, and female, and my hyperactive/impulsive tendencies soon manifested along those lines...according to my old report cards, anyway :o.

I got up from my seat after I had finished my own work (very rapidly) to "help" other kids who seemed to be struggling.
I interrupted when I had the answer faster than others did and was "helping" in that manner.
I learned by HS not to fidget and instead wrote copious notes to my friends, while part of my brain absorbed the teacher's lecture. I wrote my notes in code, and when caught, the teachers were usually too embarrassed to ask me to translate them.
I channelled my argumentative talents into debate, formal and informal. If debating in class with a teacher, my verbal abilities and high intelligence would excuse me from appearing argumentative, and many times the teacher would say I brought up an excellent point and then follow my path of reasoning.

In short, I struck a balance between my Hyp & Imp factors and my clearly assigned gender role.

My 10 year old--Combined for the following:
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat.
Often gets up from seat when remaining in seat is expected.
Often talks excessively.
Often blurts out answers before questions have been finished.
Often has trouble waiting one's turn.
Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games).
Plus all the inattentive criteria.

However she is only 10 and has been raised by me, and I abolish gender role typing in my parenting tactics. Plus she is also clearly gifted, yet spent several years in "dumbed down" schooling systems. She manifested in this manner:

She became an after-school program "tutor" for children with reading difficulties. She has been lauded for her ability to read with a high degree of expression and not being judgemental of those who cannot read as well as her.
She is very verbal in defense of the classroom "out riders"; those who are "different" and get picked on by others. Her timing on bringing these issues up has been pretty poor, yet she does not get criticised because she displays my same verbal skills.
When cornered on the playground and attacked by the "in crowd" or any other clique, my child loses perspective and will use her verbal skills to provoke a physical confrontation. She is large for her age and has never been sanctioned for fighting even when the other child was injured, because her arguments are very clear to the adults.
As a toddler, her impulsivity caused her to vanish from my sight no les than 3 times, requiring me to seek police/ fire company intervention. When returned to me, the intervening professionals typically laughed, saying that she fought them because she knew not to go with strangers.
As an adolescent, she has found a group of friends who are like her, highly gifted with ADHD. They stick together at all costs, and when other children attack them for being "weird" they all respond differently, yet as a group.

My child is struggling to find her balance as a female and as a gifted human being. Sadly, there are racial issues in play in our area as well. I see her becoming very outspoken about all of this in the future, once her hormonal issues become less distressing to her.

Crazy :cool:

Copied from another post I made in the original thread:

As a child, I was the "gifted", quiet, uncoordinated, shy kid with poor social skills and low self-esteem that never stood out in anyone's mind because I did very well in school and never got into trouble. So I never would have fit the ADHD or combined types of diagnoses. From what I've learned so far, the "Inattentive" type of ADD is only somewhat recently being separated out as a different classification from the ones that include hyperactivity.

As a child in elementary school, I was probably undiagnosed as ADD as a male because I did not show any of the hyperactive/impulsive tendencies. Being a very bright lad who was eventually put into the "gifted and talented" program, I exhibited a vast majority of the Inattentive symptoms:

Poor handwriting (while all of my other grades were A's and B's, this was consistently C at best)
Short attention span, unless very interested in something
Easily distracted
Lacks attention to details
Skips around while reading (in high school this turned into Reads the Cliff Notes the Day Before the Test rather than actually reading the book, though when I had a book that I liked reading, you couldn't pull it away from me)
Tendency to be easily bored
Poor organization and planning
Severe, chronic procrastination (everything was done the night before it was due in a frenzy of activity)
Poor follow through (I always started out with big plans for projects that ended up on the wayside due to the procrastination and boredom)
Lack of talking (I was the shy type)
Coordination difficulties (I was always the last one picked for teams in gym and on the playground :( )
Switches around numbers, letters and words
and so on

I think because of my intelligence and good grades, many of these inattentive symptoms were looked at as me being ahead of the class curve and therefore not being challenged. Had I exhibited any of the symptoms of hyperactivity, I believe as a male, it would have been a much easier diagnosis back then.

In my teen years, when I was abused by my dad (not in a violent way or anything - my dad was pretty much a pedophile), the fact that male sexual abuse was unheard of or just discounted or a "tabboo" subject was one of the reasons that I planned on taking that fact with me to my grave. In reality, recent studies quote at times a 1 in 7 or higher rate of male sexual abuse. Yet even around 10%-15% or better of male children being abused, it is still a topic that is shunned or discounted by much of society when female sexual abuse is almost reported daily in the news. As a male, it's not something that you are supposed to let happen because we are supposed to be strong and manly and able to fend for ourselves. And it's a statistic that will likely continue to grow unless society looks at it with the seriousness that is warranted.

For me it was the stereotypical "it must be depression cause you are a girl." Fairly young I learned to control my hyperactivity and more socially inappropriate symptoms because my mom was very rigorous in that. (She's from European nobility so we were raised with proper etiquette to a higher degree than normal, for me some things just "aren't done") So when I wanted help, no thought ADD. Even the therapist who suggested it, dismissed it saying that "my depression just looks a lot like ADD"

Before I got diagnosed I used to get into trouble alot at school and at home and nobody even thought about the possibility of me having ADHD, they just said stuff like, "boys will be boys" and "he'll grow out of it".

It was annoying because I got so frustrated all the time and I used to get really angry.

When I couldn't do my work the teachers thought I was just trying to be "tough" in front of my friends.

I think if a girl acted like me, she would be noticed earlier then I was.

I think boys are expected to be troublemakers.

For me it was the stereotypical "it must be depression cause you are a girl." Fairly young I learned to control my hyperactivity and more socially inappropriate symptoms because my mom was very rigorous in that. (She's from European nobility so we were raised with proper etiquette to a higher degree than normal, for me some things just "aren't done") So when I wanted help, no thought ADD. Even the therapist who suggested it, dismissed it saying that "my depression just looks a lot like ADD"
I heard tons of that myself. I spent years on antidepressents thinking "Is this REALLY as good as it can be for me?" :rolleyes:.

I am depressed though. I also have severe ADHD!

OT sidenote (mods may delete since it is astrological in nature but this is not advice):

I am born in the Year of the Firehorse according to Chinese Astrology. This is considered to be an extremely unlucky and improper placement for a female to the old Chinese culture, and historically, female Firehorses were killed at birth :eek:. This barbaric practice no longer occurs, but suffice to say, I am not the most lady-like of ladies.

What is a firehorse and how do you know? I like astrology for the fun of it. I mean how great is it so say to your little sister "You're a rat" and not get in trouble. :p

PM me for more on that ;) I respect forum rules. Suffice to say, you cannot get accurate Chinese astrology from a placemat!

Fire Horses are seen as outgoing, people-loving, ambitious, rebellious, and independent. They are supposedly freedom-loving and impossible to contain.

These all sound like perfectly fine qualities to the westerner, especially to Americans, since our culture prizes individualism, but in other societies, these are not necessarily good qualities. They are especially disliked in women; wives are supposed to be submissive and dependent, not ambitious or headstrong, and that belief is not uncommon in Western cultures, either.

While ambition and independence are prized as ingredients for success nowadays, they were never seen as ideal female qualities. The proper woman was seen as submissive, quiet, and dependent, not rebellious and strong. This prejudice against fire horse women kept the 1906 herd wracked by poverty in Japan, since no one would risk marrying a woman with these qualities. Now over 90 years old, many of the surviving hinoeuma women are poor and homeless. While the 1966 herd isn't this disadvantaged, they do battle these stereotypes every day.


Crazy :cool: