Girls With ADHD Don't Always Finish the School Year Strong

According to the CDC’s most recent figures, about 15 percent of boys have been diagnosed with ADHD, compared with 8 percent of girls, roughly a two-to-one gap, yet almost no one who studies this believes that gap reflects how many girls actually have the condition. Girls are diagnosed on average about five years later than boys, and by some clinical estimates as many as half of girls with ADHD are never identified at all. Where a boy is often flagged around age seven, a comparable girl is closer to twelve, which in practice means she loses the years when early support does the most good.

Part of the reason has to do with how ADHD manifests in girls, who tend to have the inattentive presentation more often than the hyperactive one. A girl with ADHD will not be climbing the walls or throwing gum at the teacher’s hair; she’ll be the daydreamer who loses her homework, rereads the same paragraph five times, and works twice as long to turn in something that looks easy. Researchers have found that parents and teachers are more likely to refer a disruptive boy for evaluation than a compliant girl, even when the two are equally impaired. The diagnostic criteria did not help: they were drawn largely from studies of hyperactive boys and were not broadened until 2013, a change that finally allowed many more girls to qualify.

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