Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to 45 Left to Right podcast. Today is going to be my last episode in my ADHD series. We're going to talk about women with adhd. And the reason this will be my last one.
Well, a couple of reasons. One, I have done a lot of research on adhd, and I am quite saturated. And if you've been listening to all of mine, my episodes about it, you are probably saturated, too. But also, my guest today is just amazing, dynamic, knowledgeable, a leading expert in the field of adhd, and I cannot improve upon her. She's amazing. Her name is Dr. Kathleen Nadeau. She's a clinical psychologist with a bachelor's, master's, and PhD in psychology.
And she has done decades of research in about ADHD and women and girls. And also outside of that, she is the founder and co owner of the Chesapeake Center. And honestly, she talks about her credentials much better than I do. And that'll come up in the interview. Of course. We had a long kind of getting to know you discussion before we kind of got into the major content of the interview. So I'm going to just drop you kind of in the middle of it. It just talks about. We kind of are talking about her education at the University of Florida and certain, you know, prejudices that she faced as a woman that I could relate to. And then we kind of naturally delve into the topic of the challenges that women have, especially women with adhd. So I hope you enjoy her interview as much as I enjoyed doing it. And thanks for listening.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Well, I saw in your bios online that you went to the University of Florida.
[00:02:52] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Go Gators.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: And did you as well?
[00:02:57] Speaker B: I did not. But I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and my dad went to the University of Florida for law school. So I grew up a Gator in Philly.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: How interesting. So what years would your dad have been in law school?
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Let me think. Late 60s. He's when he's 80 or maybe I can't do the math, he's 82.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: So I bet it would have been late 60s. And that's when I was in graduate school at the University of Florida.
And I will tell you a story. Is your dad still alive?
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yes, he is.
[00:03:38] Speaker C: Okay. About the law school. In those years, it was a bastion of male chauvinism.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:03:48] Speaker C: I mean, I'm serious. It was outrageous. In fact, that doesn't surprise me. I went into the law school because I was very interested in juvenile justice issues and the psychological issues that got kids involved in the whole justice system. And so I had to go to the law school because this was pre Internet, you had to actually look up things that were printed on paper and felt very unwelcome there, really. And there were famously two women. I think there may have been only two women in the entire law school. And these two women were just powerhouses. And they not only were law students, they owned a popular bar in Gainesville, really. And ran it. And everybody knew who they were. They were. They were amazing, ahead of their time. Women.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: I love that. I love that.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: So ask your dad if you.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: I will.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure he knows. That's funny, because my. So my dad was definitely of that time, you know, I would say probably a chauvinist. And then he was gifted a daughter who didn't put up with any of that. And he definitely changed. I ended up going into the army, which he was proud of, because that, you know, he spent time in the army.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: I remember I came back from Iraq and we were just sort of casually talking and he said something like, well, women don't belong in combat. And my mom said, hello, your daughter just got back. And my daughter can do anything.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Well, and the reality is, I mean, warfare has changed. I mean, anybody can operate.
Pushing a button, managing a drone. I mean, it's not. There's this outmoded. It's not hand to hand combat in wars anymore.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:05] Speaker C: Far away and blowing the heck out of somebody from a distance.
Anybody could do that. Yeah, a 12 year old could do that.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Well, I found too, you know, I was in Iraq from 2005 to 2006, and here in Congress they were debating should women be in combat? And there were women driving the, you know, the Humvees and everything. They were gunners on the Humvees. And it's like it's already happening, you know, like, stop debating.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: You know, what surprised and really troubled me is yesterday I was reading a news headline.
It may have been in the New York Times, I'm not sure. I have an apple newsfeed that sends me headlines from all over the place that the Pope was give. And I've been a real fan of this Pope. I mean, he's sort of been a man of the people and, you know, much more down to earth than previous ones. And he was lecturing at a Catholic university, I think in Belgium.
And the students were really pummeling him with quotes, questions about the role of women in the church, oh, and blah, blah, blah, and why aren't we ordaining women? And why aren't women in the hierarchy of the Church. And the Pope, to my amazement, said that it's ugly. That was the word he used, ugly. When women try to play the roles of men thought, what planet do you live on?
[00:07:52] Speaker B: I know it's ugly.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: And he said that the role of women is to raise the next generation.
He's. He's 87. Yeah. I guess he can sort of be forgiven, but for God's sake.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: I know.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Ugly.
Ugly.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Oh, that's an ugly word.
[00:08:14] Speaker C: That's an ugly word. And I thought, oh, I just.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that sort of stuff gets me so worked up because I see, I mean, obviously, as a, as a woman in the world trying to raise a family and also have a career and then having all of my friends trying to do the same thing and doing very well, you know, and I think the world is lacking that female perspective still. You know, it just, I don't know, I've seen with that Pope. He, he's definitely. I don't know if he's catering to, you know, the cardinals or the direction of the church right now or just getting older and, you know, more senile, which is.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: But, you know, but, you know, I think one of the really important things to think about and talk about with women with ADHD is that women have been given. Women in general in the past two generations have been given an impossible role to play in that all of the responsibilities that fell to women when they didn't work outside the home continue to fall to women for the most part now that they're working full time. And that's an unfair, unreasonable burden on a neurotypical woman. And then when you have adhd, you are living in hair on fire mode all the time and feeling that there's something wrong with you, because this is what women are supposed to be able to do. And I think possibly the biggest mission we should all be on is ridding women with ADHD and society in general of that expectation.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, you know, what got me interested in looking at ADHD in general is, you know, I was on my Instagram feed and I would see a lot. Obviously my algorithm is stressed out mothers in women. And a lot of. There's a lot of content about whether it was a flippant remark about adhd, like, oh, my ADHD has me, you know, stressed out, or if it was someone who was legitimately or, you know, diagnosed with it, or. So my question was to myself or to find out, is this just an over stressed, overstimulated mother and woman, or is this adhd?
And it's probably Both, you know, and.
[00:11:03] Speaker C: So I, it's so interesting. I've thought about these things upside down and sideways. And what I read was in World War II, for the first time ever, historically, many, many women went to work and had to go to work because all the men were sent overseas. And so that's the Rosie the Riveter and the women working in the factories helping to make the. All the things that had to be made for war. And guess what? The federal government created free childcare facilities for those women because they were working full time. How could they be expected? Who's going to take care of the kids?
And then when all the men came marching home, When World War II ended, all the women went back to the kitchen. Those daycare centers were of course, immediately stopped. And it has never again been considered on a national basis. Should not there be daycare for the children of women that work full time? And why isn't that just part of our public education system?
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Right, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:22] Speaker C: And I learned, I lived in France for a year. And in France, there is free, high quality child care from the age of 6 weeks if you wanted, if you need to go back to work.
There's, there's nothing.
In fact, I had a tutor the year I lived in France who insisted I am not married. She lived with the same guy for like 25 years and they had two kids, but they're not married.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: She.
[00:12:57] Speaker C: In France, married is in many ways associated with the Catholic Church. And the French are kind of down, so why do I need to get married in the eyes of the church?
But anyway, she was saying that in France women really don't need a husband, that the French government pays you subsidies to have children because the birth rate was going down and they provide free, good quality child care so that you can continue working.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Interesting. And they have labor laws also that are very pro quality of life. And you know, they have great things. So that's interesting that here in America we are work, work, work, work, work, and we don't have the child.
Yeah, exactly. And I think it's interesting too, women have been taught, you know, I mean, I grew up in the 80s, so, you know, that was kind of part of the, I think, revolution of women, you know, wanting to work or being expected work and often took care of the, the home. But men haven't been taught to be an involved partner in general.
I'm married to somebody who was raised by a very strong woman and he's an equal partner for sure. But I would say most of my friends don't have that?
[00:14:37] Speaker C: Not at all. Yeah.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:39] Speaker C: And it's interesting.
I'm in a second marriage, although we've been together for almost 50 years. It is a second marriage. Yeah. Yeah.
And so we were. Both of us were married briefly, very young in life. And of course it didn't work out. We both got married way too young. And then we met each other. I was 30 and now I'm 78.
So when he was married for the first time. My husband is a scientist and had a PhD in physics and he was doing astrophysics at NASA and blah, blah, blah.
And I hear tell that he was very much the male chauvinist in his first marriage and his wife did not work. And he figured, you know, I work, you take care of everything else.
And that was certainly not, you know, my game plan when he.
I was a hard working, professional woman and that, that didn't suit me. And so he, he has gone through radical changes. But what really interested me is the first two or three years we were together, we would go. His mother and family had a little what they called a camp on Lake Champlain where his mother spent the entire summer and had for a gazillion years. So we would go up there to visit at least a week or 10 days every summer.
And so my husband would come in the kitchen. If I was helping to prepare a meal or clean up after a meal, he would come in and his mother would show. Shoo him out of the kitchen. Get out of here. What are you doing in here? I mean, you could tell how he had been raised.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. And it's not really giving our, you know, I have a son who's 12, so I think about this in raising a man doesn't really give them much credit either that they could be capable of doing these things. You know, when I'm gone, I don't travel as much anymore. But when I did, and my husband was tasked with working and taking care of a very active toddler. My son has always been, you know, like this. He. He struggled and it was hard, but he could do it. You know, they were fed and he was bathed and all of that. He was happy when I came home.
[00:17:23] Speaker C: But I think a lot of it is just habits and routine.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:28] Speaker C: And it's, it's crazy hard if you don't have a routine and oh my God, I forgot to make the lunches and what time is it? And you know, but if you're used to doing it every morning, you just.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Right. Do it right. Well, this is an interesting shift into What I wanted to ask you about, because, you know, right now. So the podcast episode I'll be releasing next week, or maybe this week, is about just ADHD in girls and how it presents itself differently than boys. And then I want to talk about that and then kind of shift into what it means when they become women, maybe with a late diagnosis or no diagnosis.
So I guess.
Well, tell me this before I get going. Tell me about who you are and then your expertise about adhd.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: And this is just meant to be my intro to the podcast.
I am Dr. Kathleen Nadeau. I'm a clinical psychologist, and I come from a family where many of us, including myself, my daughter, my granddaughters, and my sister all have adhd.
And people often ask me, is that why you went into the field? And my answer is, not at all. In fact, it was kind of a backwards entry into the field. I was in private practice. I had a general practice. I loved doing psychotherapy. And all of a sudden, in the late 70s, my phone started ringing off the hook from pediatricians saying, do you know how to diagnose? Back then we called it add, not adhd, because we don't. And we're getting all these parents calling us saying, I think my son is usually in those days, my son has add.
And so we got all kinds of referrals. And the reason for that is the public law had changed. And all of a sudden, schools were required to provide supports and accommodations if there was an official ADD diagnosis. And a lot of parents had avoided the diagnosis even though they realized that their son, who was hyperactive and impulsive, had it because they didn't want to put their son on medication. And they thought that's the only thing they can do, so why bother to get the diagnosis? And all of a sudden, there was a very good reason to get the diagnosis other than medication.
And so we got so many referrals. I was in a small group practice and another clinical psychologist who had a strong background in education, and I started doing all these assessments, and then we started working with those families. Can you help us beyond just, can you make the diagnosis? And we started a little assessment center within the private practice that just grew like Topsy, basically fueled by that public law.
And the more I got into it, the more I realized that this thing we called ADD at the time was a lot more interesting than I had ever been taught in graduate school. I went to graduate school in the late 60s, and in the late 60s, we believed it almost exclusively impacted boys. There was an odd girl here or there that was just like the boys, meaning hyperactive and impulsive.
And we were taught that boys outgrew it around puberty. And that's because the thing we were paying most attention to was hyperactivity. And it is true that hyperactivity in boys tends to decline around puberty in reaction to hormonal changes. So we were way off base. We didn't believe adults had it, we didn't believe girls had it, and we believed it was outgrown, and we just had no idea what we were looking at.
And as I began to treat these kids, I talked to the parents who almost universally said, you know, I was a lot like that when I was a kid, and to some extent, I still am.
And so my brain kicked into gear and said, there's something really important here.
And I edited the first professional book, book for professionals on the diagnosis and treatment of adult adhd. And I invited a group of experts from around the country together to publish this book. And that was like this big door opening that you don't outgrow it. Adults have it, too. And it looks very different in adults. They're not throwing spitballs. They're not knocking their desk over, but they're still having a lot of difficulty in different ways, managing their lives.
So the more I started working with the parents of the kids, the more I learned in that process.
And so my first project was adult adhd, and my second project that you are very interested in was, okay, what about girls and women? We know that adults have it. We have gotten rid of that myth. But let's look at girls and women. And so in the 1990s, I and my good friend Patricia Quinn, who is a developmental pediatrician, retired now, wrote a book called Understanding Girls with adhd, which we followed up with Understanding Women with adhd.
And so that became my focus and my passion. And in that process, I realized I have adhd, and it doesn't look like the extreme version that we see in very hyperactive, impulsive little boys.
It was. It was easier for me to realize my own ADHD because my daughter was so fidgety and hyper that I took her for just her annual checkup with pediatrician when she was four years old, and she had little tiny bruises all over her knees and her lower legs because she was always bumping into furniture and falling out of trees. And she was just one of those very active and a little bit klutzy kiddos.
And he said, she's hyperactive. She's got add.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Oh, interesting.
[00:24:45] Speaker C: And it's. It was Very unusual in that day and time for a girl to be diagnosed at age 4.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: And then I started thinking about my sister who's five years younger. And it just as, as I learned about adhd, I learned about how it has impacted my family in many different ways.
And I've often told people I had a younger brother who was the poster child for a boy with adhd. I mean, he hated school, he was hyperactive, he was a cut up, he was very popular with other guys, but boy, did he hate school. And he never went to college. And here he is with an older sister who has a peach.
How could I have adhd? And so I've been doing for decades now thinking about ADHD from a much broader perspective.
And there's an enormous variety in the ways that ADHD is manifested. And that's because us human beings are very complex.
So it's not that I am adhd, I have adhd, but I might have all kinds of other things. I might have very supportive parents, or I might have come from a very dysfunctional background. I might have depression, I might have anxiety, I might have a high IQ or a huge musical talent. I mean, we're complicated human beings and all of these things interact. And that's why ADHD can look so remarkably different. We're social creatures and we females are especially social creatures. And I think that is one of the most profound reasons why ADHD looks and feels different in us females than in the much easier to diagnose males.
So getting back to who am I? I have written 15 books related to ADHD. As I began to think about all of these different facets and aspects, I'm the head of the largest private ADHD clinic in the United States. I mean, we have a clinical staff of 40 people now, and they are psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers, counselors, coaches, educational specialists, nurse practitioners. And we've just got like a huge staff.
And so as the head of that huge staff, I'm always thinking, what are we learning? What's new, what's different? And so I have, I've had a deeply, and am having a deeply satisfying career because there's so many people that are impacted by this thing that we call adhd. We really need a different name for it. And I really feel gratified that through my writing and training and treating countless families that I've have brought a lot to bear to the field.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say so.
Well, you said something interesting about.
So a lot of that I've read is that, well, in general, boys present with the hyperactivity and impulsivity and then girls present more inattentive. So you said something about, well, I guess what is the root? Is it just because of girls, let's say, biological makeup, that they present more of an attentive, or is it more of a social makeup that has them present that way? Very, very broad terms?
[00:28:59] Speaker C: Well, that's a very good question. And what I would say to you is, we females are different. And so you really have to look at the biology of being female with an overlay of this thing we call adhd. And the reason I say that is I am hyperactive.
And people look at me and say, you don't look hyperactive.
You're sitting there calmly in a chair, you're speaking calmly. How could you be hyperactive?
But the way that hyperactivity is so often manifested in females is being hyper talkative, not racing around, not throwing things, not, you know, jumping off balconies. We talk a lot.
Women are different in that we are much more tuned into our social environments and women socialize very, very differently. Women connect. And let me go back and correct that. I'm not talking about women, I'm talking about females.
And so from a very early age, most of us females try very hard to compensate for our adhd because we're much more social creatures. We want to be accepted by our peers. We want to not be in trouble with our teachers. I mean, my younger brother, I don't think he cared one whit if he hadn't done his homework. And I would say, you know, Richard, don't you have any homework? And he'd say, yeah, so what? He wasn't going to do it. He didn't care. And I was there frantically trying to get it all done.
And I remember that the only teacher conference my mother ever requested about me when I was in sixth grade is, why is my daughter working so hard?
She's a good student, she doesn't need to work this hard. What's going on? What do you think?
And I think that's one of the ways that my hyperactivity was manifested is just overdoing it. And I would say that's true of me to this very day, that if I wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning, I might immediately get on my computer and start working on that article, you know, and my husband will say, what in the world are you doing? And I just, well, I was awake and I'm gonna work.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: And so you really have to think about the interplay of having a female Brain having a female body. We all know nothing to do with adhd, that girls are less active than boys. We just are less in general, we are less physically active in general. We are much more motivated to try to fit in.
And so there's a phenomenon that so many poor mothers have been blamed for of girls with ADHD just holding it in all day. You know, I don't want the teacher to get mad at me. Oh, I'm terrified the teacher's going to call on me and I'll embarrass myself, I'll sound stupid because I don't know what she's talking about.
I have worked with little girls who've told me I've learned when I need to listen because I'll just be sort of thinking my own thoughts. But then if the teacher says okay, then I look up like I know she's about to tell us we're going to start doing our math. You know, then I look up. But most of the time my thoughts are just somewhere else, very self aware that that's the way my brain works. But I'm trying to fit in. And so that causes a lot of stress and tension for little girls holding it together all day. And so very often these little girls get picked up by their mom or get off the school bus and just start exploding all over the place because they can't hold it in a minute longer. And home is a much safer place to do that. And so of course the poor mom was blamed like she's an angel at school. So there's something wrong with what's going on with that mother when it's just that it's, I call it the hold and explode pattern.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:55] Speaker C: So many little girls and they might get in a screaming argument with a sibling over you took my sweater or that's my cookie. It doesn't matter what it is, they're just letting it rip.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: I have actually interviewed her for this episode.
She has an 8 year old daughter who is just awesome and full of lots of personality and she just got diagnosed with adhd. But I know at home she can really give her mother a fit, you know, a lot. But at school they did get the ADHD diagnosis just because she was struggling. I think she had a very astute teacher that noticed she was struggling with focus.
But she lived well behaved at school. But yeah, when it came to getting her to do her homework at home and just other little things, she is this adorable nightmare. It's kind of what her mother would say.
Great kid, but there was a lot going on there at age 8.
[00:35:05] Speaker C: And there's another phenomenon that not enough is talked about, but we mothers often are much more critical of our daughters with ADHD than of our sons. It's like, consciously or not so consciously, we're still imposing those unfair expectations on our daughters.
If they are argumentative or messy or always running late or having fights with their siblings, that mothers can be much more judgmental about that and sort of go, well, he's a boy. Of course he yells, of course his room is a mess. He's a boy. That they have more permission to have those ADHD traits. And they're almost considered masculine traits.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Right. Boy.
Isn't that something to think about as a society?
[00:36:10] Speaker C: As a society. And of course, the smallest society we live in is our family.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Well, you know, sort of talking about, my friend's daughter got this diagnosis pretty early for a girl. Why do you think girls have been overlooked with ADHD diagnoses? Just because it presents differently or.
[00:36:41] Speaker C: I think it's a combination. I think that the population in general and many, sadly, health and mental health practitioners are still way behind the curve in terms of what we've learned. And so I think that stereotypic, hyperactive, impulsive, oppositional, difficult to manage, not doing well in school is the stereotype. And the further a girl is from that stereotype, I find even among mental health practitioners, they're more likely to diagnose anxiety.
And yes, there is anxiety, but in many, many cases, the anxiety is caused by the ADHD that I'm so afraid of. My mom's going to yell at me, my teacher's going to get mad at me that I feel stressed and anxious all the time. And mental health practitioners who are much more educated in recognizing anxiety will diagnose that and attribute the inattention to the anxiety. And I think that's very sloppy diagnostic work in a way. When they say, oh, well, of course she's anxious, I mean distracted. She's anxious. And being anxious doesn't make you lose your house keys, doesn't make you forget where your shoes are, doesn't make you run late all the time. I mean, they're just looking in this very simplistic way of she's distracted because she's anxious.
And you'd have to have an incredibly, permanently, very, very high level of anxiety to just go, oh, my gosh, I can't remember anything. I don't know what I'm doing. That's not the way people.
I mean, that might happen if your house is on Fire.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Right, right, absolutely.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: But otherwise it's a misattribution because we are not training mental health professionals. We're not training psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counselors to understand how ADHD looks in girls. I hired a psychiatrist from top level child psychiatry fellowship where of course they teach the child psychiatry fellows about adhd.
And I talked to her about my work and my writing about girls when, you know, when I was interviewing her and she said they didn't teach us any of that. And this was not very long ago, this was four or five years ago, didn't teach us any about how it looks different in girls. So the training is awful. And in fact, one of, you know, my life's goal and I'm in the process of doing is starting an online ADHD training institute to meet that enormous gap in our training.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah.
I don't. I, I wish that girls and women. Seems like everything is started with a, a boy or a man as the, you know, like in almost everything, even in car seats or in, in seatbelts. It's all based on a man's body.
Just, you know, so women are injured more in car accidents, whatever.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: Exactly. And, and I think, I think it's unconscious. I don't think it's a deliberate thing of, oh, let's create seatbelts that are bad for women.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:40:40] Speaker C: It's just that these things are being designed by men. And so of course they reference themselves. I mean, there's a funny article I read about most building managers are male.
And so most building managers set the temperature of the office building to suit their male body. And most women in office buildings sit there and freeze. And we have blankets that we provide to our admin staff. We have small heaters because we have no control. We are in a giant medical building and it's cranking up. I went into my clinic yesterday and it was 65 degrees throughout the office. 65 degrees freezing.
[00:41:37] Speaker B: I'm cold just thinking about that.
[00:41:38] Speaker C: Right. So I think that, that in areas where men are in charge of decision making, I don't think it's some vast conspiracy to discriminate against women. I mean, they're just thinking, well, that's a comfortable temperature. That's what you know.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, absolutely. My husband works in a big office building and he always. And he runs hot.
He always comments during the summer. He's like, oh my gosh, I was freezing in the office today. And I'm like, think about the women you work with. They're dying.
Loan her your sweatshirt.
[00:42:26] Speaker C: You know, the other Thing that I think we really need to talk about when we're talking about girls is that Steve Hinshaw out at UC Berkeley did years and years of wonderful research on girls with adhd. I don't know if you're familiar with his work. Yeah, but he in particular, he's just done wonderful, wonderful work on girls, was interested in exploring the social connections between girls with ADHD and girls without adhd. And so he had a summer camp on campus at UC Berkeley and half of the girls did not have adhd and half of them did. And he had a lot of grad students in there observing the girls. And so lots of interesting projects were going on during this eight or ten week long summer camp. I think most of the kids probably were faculty kids or had some connection with the university.
But what Steve Henshaw's work really documented is that the great majority of girls with ADHD have enormous difficulty fitting in and being accepted by non ADHD girls.
And he talked about that the more hyperactive, impulsive girls were socially rejected, as in, we don't want to play with you because you interrupt, you're bossy, you, you know, whatever it was, they were over the top and you know, we don't like playing with you.
And the quiet, inattentive girls were what he called socially neglected in that they weren't offending anybody. It's just that they didn't know how to join in the conversation. They didn't know how to fit in, they couldn't.
Girls social interactions are very complex compared to boys.
Boys is just, hey, you want to go play ball? Hey, you want to go hike in the woods? You know, whatever. Just it's activity driven, not interactivity driven. And girls is just the opposite. And so a lot of quiet, inattentive girls just don't know how to get into the conversation. And they may say things that are sort of a day late and a dollar short. Like the conversational topic has moved on by the time they thought of something they wanted to say about something that somebody said two minutes ago. They just can't keep up with the pace and the complexity of a little group of girls all talking.
And I was so struck, I, I mentioned I have a sister with ADHD and I, as you can probably tell, am very talkative.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Coming from another person who's very talkative.
[00:45:38] Speaker C: But I was at a family gathering with my sister a number of years ago and we were just a small group of maybe eight or nine of us sitting around in somebody's living room just telling stories about when we were kids or blah, blah, blah, and having a good time. And then she and I and my brother left in the same car from that family gathering.
And she immediately lamented. I could just never get a word in edgewise. I mean, by the time I thought of something I wanted to say, somebody else had started a story, and I just never.
And my brother, the one with adhd, who has no trouble at all telling stories, jumping in, said to her, you just got to jump in there. You just. But her timing, her natural timing, meant she was waiting for a gap when nobody was saying anything. And there. There never was such a gap because we're all a family of talkers.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: Oh, gosh.
So she does better one on one, maybe.
[00:46:51] Speaker C: Yes. And so she and I talk one on one, and she. She will talk my ear off for an hour if it's just the two of us. But in. In that situation, she doesn't have to worry about what's going on in a group of people.
And she knows I'm just. I'm on the phone with her, and we're just talking. So she can talk as long as she wants to.
[00:47:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Ah, interesting.
[00:47:24] Speaker C: And so I would say that females live in a social web, as I would describe it. And in each one of our webs, some people are closer to the center of the web, and some people are less connected to us. But it's all this intricate web of relationships, and if something goes awry, there's suddenly a tear in that web, and things can become very loose and untangled about. I don't even have a relationship with these people anymore because somebody. I offended somebody, and I had no intention of it. And then they talked about me to so and so and so then I didn't get invited to the birthday party, and, you know, and it can all unravel.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems that. Like a nightmare for a girl, like a teenage girl who's already, you know, whether she's, like, sick of puberty or after.
Because I felt like our social relationships got much more complex.
I prefer to hang out with boys because they were simpler.
[00:48:48] Speaker C: You know, I hear you. And I hung out with a lot of boys myself. I just want to mention that I have a hard stop at noon, and we're very, very close to that.
But I think. I think you're asking very important questions and that we're still working on. How do we look at ADHD in girls through the female lens?
Because it's.
First we are females, and then we have adhd, and we might also be very good at skipping rope. And we might be very good at foreign languages. I mean, ADHD does not define us. It's just one of many interrelated aspects of who we are. And so I think that we need to get away from looking at ADHD in this ADHD box.
Do you know who Oliver Sacks is? He's a neurologist, and he's written some wonderful books.
One of his, the man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a.
[00:50:05] Speaker B: Sounds familiar to me, but he's very.
[00:50:09] Speaker C: Well known and he is very elderly at this point, but he made some wonderful comments about autism Spectrum Disorder.
Talking about, each person on the autism spectrum is an entirely unique individual. And so if you meet one person with autism, you've met one person with autism.
And yes, there are a few common threads running through, but there's so many other factors influencing who that person is that all need to be taken into account that you really need to know the biography of that person and also all of their intrinsic gifts and challenges. They're not just an autistic person.
And as I read his very thoughtful comments about autism, I said we should be saying exactly the same thing about adhd.
That to be someone with ADHD who also has severe social anxiety and dyslexia, is an utterly different girl than someone with ADHD who has an IQ of 135 and is extroverted and has highly supportive parents and no learning disabilities. I mean, we just come in so many different flavors.
And so I think we're oversimplifying it to the detriment of the girls that we want to help.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I find myself with the podcast. I usually do an interview or I tell a personal story, and then I do a lot of research. And so much of the research is very along these gender lines. And, I mean, you have to categorize it somehow. But I was recording yesterday and I just said, I'm just going to say that every time I make a general statement, it hurts me because I know it's not everybody and every, you know, there's complexity to it. But just to get the information out.
[00:52:35] Speaker C: I will finish our interview with a story that really amused me because we women, we're really doing harm to ourselves by trying to submit to and impose upon ourselves ridiculous societal expectations that we're supposed to manage all of this stuff, our jobs, our kids, our home, ourselves, and do it well, or we're not being a very good woman.
And the funny story is I came across a book called the Unmade Bed, and it was written by A guy, he's American. His wife is Canadian, and she got some big job with Canadian television station in Toronto. And so they moved from New York to Toronto. And he's a writer. And so he was going to be home and be Mr. Mom. And his wife had this big job, and the book was all about. I'm totally fine with that, but I'm not going to try to be you. And so the unmade bed was just sort of a metaphor for, I'm not going to make the bed. I'm not going to ask the kids to make the bed. We're just going to get back in it tonight. Why do you have to make the bed?
[00:53:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:54:00] Speaker C: And in other words, I'm in no way going to send the thank you notes or have very fancy birthday parties, because that's what the other mother's doing. I'm going to. I'm going to do it my way. And he, as a man, I think, felt completely free to do that and announce that I will run the house, I will take care of the kids, but I'm going to do it my way. I'm not going to cook a separate dinner every night. I'm not going to, you know.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: Right. Yeah.
[00:54:30] Speaker C: And I think what's striking about. And it was a humorous book, but I think what's striking about it is the ease with which he announced his parameters is this is the way I'm going to do what I've signed up for. And I think we women need to define our own parameters.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you there.
[00:54:51] Speaker C: And to support each other in doing that. Right?
[00:54:55] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think that is a perfect ending point. I really appreciate this interview. It was wonderful, informative, and, you know, more complex, I think, than I could ever do with my own research.
[00:55:11] Speaker C: So thank you. Wonderful. So I've so enjoyed talking with you, and please let me know when the podcast is launched, and I'll let my folks at the office know because they like to create links to podcasts that I've been on. Great.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: That'd be wonderful. Thank you so much. Have a good day.
[00:55:30] Speaker C: Thank you for inviting me. Okay.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: All right. Bye. Bye.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: Welcome back to 45 left or right podcast. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Kathleen. With Dr. Kathleen Mado. I have interviewed a lot of people in my time as a journalist, and she might be my favorite. She was fun and engaging.
It was just a discussion, which she was great. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. I just kind of want to end it with how I got started on this series and talk a little bit about What I've learned personally, um, I started this ADHD series because I'm on Instagram and my algorithm gives me lots of content reels about overburdened mothers.
And it's very fitting for me in my life right now. But I saw, and I still see adhd, that term used kind of flippantly like, oh, it's my adhd. And so I kind of wanted to look into with women especially, are we as mothers generally just overloaded? I think yes. Or is it also that we do have undiagnosed ADHD, and that makes kind of the pressures and responsibilities of motherhood much harder? And obviously it's a range. Right? So that's kind of what got me started. And, you know, I've learned so much about adhd. I think in the past, I have fallen into the idea that it's over diagnosed or it. Maybe it's. I. I don't think I ever thought it wasn't a real thing, but I just wasn't sure what it was. Um, I didn't know the depth of it. And so I've been really interested to learn what it is and all of its different formations, you know, depending on who you are, sometimes what your gender is. Some just. There's a lot of different factors. Um, I don't think we overuse the term adhd. I think there's just a lot more research into it, a lot more awareness into it. And so it's a common term now. And I think that's okay because awareness is good. Um, it's just complicated. It's not just that wild boy in the classroom.
[00:58:28] Speaker C: It's.
[00:58:29] Speaker A: There's so many different layers and levels to it. And, you know, I hope this series, if you may be thinking, gosh, do I have adhd? Or what's going on, Maybe this is health. I hope so.
And I have to say, personally, in all the research that I've done, I am thinking I might have adhd. I was a little hesitant to look into it because I didn't want to be sort of like, oh, I'm doing all this research, and then you start seem that, you know, kind of seeing symptoms. Like, I remember in college I took abnormal psychology, and you're learning all about the different traits of all these different mental illnesses and oops. And I have not. Like, you know, I just. So I've tried to be aware that that could happen. Um, but I do have some of the traits of adhd, especially in women. I am an overthinker, I am a perfectionist. I can Be very scatterbrained. I'm definitely an excessive talker. That's how I got into trouble in school, was just for talking. Um, and I think I've adapted to life's demands by being extremely, probably obsessively organized. Not in the state of my house, but in just how I go about my day. I'm very regulated, very structured, and I've had to be. So those are just some little things. But the biggest thing for me is the chronic overthinking, and that can definitely be a hallmark of adhd. So let me give you an example. I'm going to take child parenting out of the equation because there's a lot of levels and layers to that. I'm just going to talk about Luna, our six month old puppy, golden retriever, husky mix, just a wonderful dog, but she's young, so I am her primary trainer since I work from home and I'm with her all day long.
She is very smart, coarse, adorable, very eager to please, and honestly, she's easy to train. Because of that.
Despite that, I absolutely overthink her training. Um, this is kind of what my line of thinking is most days. Okay, well, I'm supposed to train her for an hour a day, but I end up doing only about 15 minutes every other day. She's picking up commands easily, but I worry that I'm not following the trainer's advice. Exactly. And is that going to lead to issues down the road? Am I setting a good foundation for her? Should I be doing other training for her, like agility training or, you know, maybe she'd be a good therapy dog. Maybe I should look into that. I haven't been able to walk her as much lately. Jeff has. She gets plenty of walks. But I wonder, am I missing bonding time with her? Does she resent me?
I mean, it just goes on and on and on.
Jeff loves her as much as I love her, but he doesn't think this way. He thinks she's cute. He definitely works with her. He walks her daily, especially because I had surgery and I'm on my knee and he's needed to. He cares about her and cares about her training. He wants her to be a good dog, but he does not dess over it like I do.
[01:02:17] Speaker C: She.
[01:02:17] Speaker A: I mean, he knows I'm an overthinker, but he sometimes, like, oh, my gosh, during, um, I mean, of course she's my primary responsibility, but this dog is absolutely fine. There's nothing to worry about. She's smart, she's friendly, she is an amazing dog. Already and she's going to be even more amazing.
We are not going to mess her up. But the thought just keep on going.
So that's sort of what I have learned about myself. And I did ask my primary care doctor to put in a referral so I could get just to see if I have adhd. Um, I have other mental health issues that, you know, that I'm being treated for, but ADHD could also explain some of those things as well. So, anyway, this will. This will be my last part of the ADHD series. I might revisit it another day, but for now, I'm gonna sort of set it aside and got some really cool things lined up. I'm not going to tell you about it now because I don't have it all organized in my head, but I hope you enjoy the series. I hope you're enjoying the podcast. If you are and you want to help me out, please go to my social media or, you know, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube also and share it with someone you think might be interested. Trying to grow my audience, and it is really hard without help, so please do that. And thanks again for listening and bye for now.
