Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
The checklists were built around the loud version of this, and girls are more often the quiet version. If she is struggling and nobody has ever suggested an assessment, that is worth pressing on.
Defiance in girls can look like refusal, withdrawal or a long-running argument about friendships rather than the disruption a teacher would report. The inattentive picture, more common in girls, causes almost no trouble for anybody else, so nobody raises it. A girl who is keeping her grades up while quietly exhausted can go all the way through school without a single question being asked.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, Lord, increase me in knowledge (Quran 20:114). Holding off until you know more is the posture taught there, and it suits a field that knows it has been missing people.
فَتَعَٰلَى ٱللَّهُ ٱلۡمَلِكُ ٱلۡحَقُّۗ وَلَا تَعۡجَلۡ بِٱلۡقُرۡءَانِ مِن قَبۡلِ أَن يُقۡضَىٰٓ إِلَيۡكَ وَحۡيُهُۥۖ وَقُل رَّبِّ زِدۡنِي عِلۡمࣰ ا
exalted be God, the one who is truly in control. [Prophet], do not rush to recite before the revelation is fully complete but say, ‘Lord, increase me in knowledge!’
Qur’an 20:114read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A research review of girls and women with ADHD concluded that they have been systematically understudied and underdiagnosed, and that referral practices along with the diagnostic conventions themselves contribute to their being overlooked. The gap sits in who gets sent for assessment, not only in who meets criteria. It is a review of the field rather than a single study, so it summarises a broad picture instead of measuring one.
Hinshaw SP, Nguyen PT, O'Grady SM, Rosenthal EA. (2022). Annual Research Review: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in girls and women: underrepresentation, longitudinal processes, and key directions.. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The tools were calibrated on the presentations that inconvenience other people.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
A clinician trained thoroughly in autism and ADHD may know almost nothing about coordination or reading difficulties, and can spend years working above foundations nobody ever checked. Ask yourself which of those categories your own training left out.
Ask for the most frightening moment of their life, then the next one down, then the next, until there is a scale running from one to a hundred. You get the ladder you needed, and they get something they did not expect: fear comes in sizes.
A tick beside 'does your mind race' means less than it looks like. Someone whose mind has raced since they were nine has nothing to compare it against, so ask what changed and when before you let the score speak.