Graphic by Brianna Stockwell ’28
By Anna Goodman ’28
Staff Writer
Usually, when you sit your parents down and say “I have something to tell you,” it’s one of three things: “I’m dying,” “I’m gay,” or “I have just committed a murder.” But, as I have no intention to die or commit felonies for a while and have already come out to my parents— accidentally and on purpose — more times than I can count, when I FaceTimed my mom and dad on Friday, Feb. 21 at around 10 in the morning, it was none of the above.
Instead, I said, “So, I think I have ADHD.”
Here is the moment where you, dear reader, say, respectfully, “Well, duh.” If you’ve met me for more than fifteen minutes — yes, me, with my eye-watering color schemes and my unending rambling and my unhealthy obsession with my Notes app — then, well, of course I do.
And who could blame you? It’s hilarious. But it’s also, in a way, quietly heart-wrenching. Because the next question to ask is, “How is it that people who have known me for a matter of months were less surprised than me, the person who’s lived in this brain for almost twenty years?”
And it’s not just me.
“Experts believe clinicians often miss ADHD in girls, for a few key reasons,” Healthline says. “They more often have internalized symptoms[,] they’re more likely to use coping strategies [and] parents and teachers are less likely to refer girls for diagnosis and treatment.”
While ADHD is very common — in 2022, the CDC reported that more than 1 in 10 children were diagnosed with it — boys are almost twice as likely to receive said diagnosis.
I interviewed several of my classmates who have ADHD and/or autism regarding this issue to get some other perspectives on the topic.
“There’s a lot of stereotypes shared between autism and ADHD,” Ari Kaufman ’28 said. “It’s just a little white boy with his trains and a little white boy who can’t sit still. And when you’re not that, you just don’t have those things.”
Instead of the aforementioned “boy who can’t sit still,” girls report being perceived as spacey, careless or overly chatty, as well as experiencing long periods of burnout followed by moments of inspiration, cycling between intense emotion and apathy or having difficulty staying organized or managing time, according to the ADHD Centre. Besides that, in girls, it’s likely to present with comorbid conditions, such as anxiety or depression, or even to be misdiagnosed, especially as bipolar disorder.
And there are other things that comorbidity doesn’t take into account either.
“My doctor told me about this phrase,” Ivy Bailey ’28 said. “[It’s] 2E, [or] “twice exceptional”: when you’re developmentally disabled and gifted, and your talents make up for being disabled. In both ways, it’s hard to get help and hard to succeed.”
Writing for newspaper The Hechinger Report, Rachel Blustain said, “[Twice-exceptional students are] believed to make up at least 6[%] of all students who have a disability … [and] often, their intelligence masks their disability, so they are never assessed for special education … [or] they’re placed in special education classes tailored to their disability but grade levels behind the school work they’re capable of.”
For as long as I can remember, my brain has felt like it’s on fire. Ideas whiz by like it’s a choppy 1984 video game, and I’m lucky if I can write a tenth of them down before they leave me again. It’s like there's a dozen leap frogs ribbiting under my skin. I am a spectator in my own mind. But none of that is visible. To the uninformed outside observer, I appear calm, maybe a bit distracted, but usually intelligent once I start speaking.
The issue is that I just never stop speaking.
I talk people’s ears off about things they don’t care about. I circle around what I try to say. I go on fifteen side tangents before I reach the crux of my argument. In the past, I ended up alienating myself from peers and possible friends with the way I expressed myself. And I never realized that I shouldn’t, because my speech was just an outward manifestation of my brain, and nothing was unusual with my brain. Right?
“The fun thing about having your brain,” Kaufman added, speaking on her own autism, “is you think your brain is normal, even when it’s not.”
And when it’s communication with others that you struggle with the most, is it any wonder that millions of girls spend countless years suffering unnoticed and wondering what the hell is going on with them, when they could have been getting support? That they sit in silence when they witness the reactions trusted adults or peers have to people who do fit the more stereotypical symptoms of autism or ADHD? That they then internalize that it’s wrong to be “like that”?
So, in the days before telling my parents I had ADHD, I was nervous. Would they roll their eyes? Would they tell me I was looking for excuses? Would they say that they had understood the autism but this was a step too far? But, when I FaceTimed my mom and dad, it was actually none of the above.
They listened calmly, looked at each other, and then my mom said, “Well, that would make sense. They have a high comorbidity.”
And then my dad added, “You know, you don’t have to justify it. We believe you.”
It would be easy for me to spin this into a feel-good story, but the truth is, I am very lucky to have parents who do grow and who do listen, and to go to a school like this that is committed to bettering the lives of disabled students. I’m also lucky that, as of now, neither of my conditions require medication or that much extra care from other people. As incredibly uncomfortable as it is, I have the ability to mask, to hide. I am also not formally diagnosed at the moment, a decision I made for safety and travel purposes. Millions of people don’t have that safety, and I’m not blind to the fact that all of these things are privileges.
But as with every privilege experienced by someone from a disadvantaged group, the downsides remain.
At Mount Holyoke College we have Disability Services, but, as they themselves say on the College’s website, a student must submit “appropriate documentation of [their] disability from a licensed provider/clinician”, meaning that students who are unaware of their own disabilities, or are unable to, or do not want to get a diagnosis — which includes me — cannot receive help from them.
The decision is a double-edged sword; you cannot be hurt if no one knows, but you also can’t be helped.
But there’s also the Accessibility Justice Club, which, according to their official “About” section on Embark, “facilitates community for students with disabilities and attempts to compensate for the institutional marginalization and isolation that is caused by systemic ableism and, even sometimes, by accommodations.”
They’re an excellent reminder that when all systems fail, oftentimes it falls to the people most affected by them to organize for a better one.
A question that I get asked a lot about autism from people that don’t have it is, “Don’t you hate it?” or “Would you really choose to have it?” like it’s some kind of infectious disease that they can’t comprehend being saddled with. I’ve always answered that I would not be me without it, and over the last few months, I’ve come to the same conclusion about my ADHD.
I'd be lying if I said there weren’t days where I hate it. I’d be lying if I said there aren’t people who spend their lives hating it, which is completely understandable, and not my place to judge. Like any disability, there are undeniable difficulties to living with it. But for me, I think of the things I’ve created because of it, of the interesting topics I’ve become obsessed with due to it, and of the community I’ve found through it. I think of all of the friends I’ve made with ADHD or autism, whose perspectives you’ve heard throughout this piece, and without whom my life would be so much less fun.
“A lot of people with it seem to gravitate towards each other,” Kat Brown ’28 once told me with a grin.
Whether you need medication or not, whether you get assistance from Disability Services or not, whether you curse its existence or not, it’s important that you know you aren’t alone. You aren’t crazy. You have a community that’s here, arms open, waiting for you, to let you know that they understand. You just have to knock on the door.
So, have you realized you have ADHD? I’ve been there. It’s gonna be okay.
Sofia Ramon ’27 contributed fact-checking.