ADHD in Girls and Women: How Speech Therapy Can Help
Many girls and women with ADHD slip through the cracks and don’t receive help because they don’t get diagnosed.
What is ADHD?
First off, what is ADHD? ADHD is a disorder of executive functioning. Executive functioning is a set of mental skills that help us plan, focus attention, use self-control, and otherwise manage ourselves and our resources. It’s very difficult to set a goal and achieve it when we have difficulties with executive functioning.
When professionals discuss ADHD, they typically discuss three types of symptoms: hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention. However, the “typical” presentation that comes to mind when many people talk about ADHD is a young boy who is constantly running around, jumping on things, playing with loud toys, addicted to devices, and doesn’t “do what he is told.”
Why are many girls and women with ADHD undiagnosed?
This image of what ADHD “typically” looks like doesn’t include young girls or women. Girls are more likely to “do that they are told” because there are more consequences for girls (“boys will be boys” after all 🙃🙃🙃) when they don’t meet the higher expectations set for them than their male counterparts.
Girls are more likely to obey the social norms of the classroom or home and therefore don’t seem to be causing trouble. Instead of the stereotypical boy with ADHD who is disrupting the class, a girl with ADHD might be described as “spacey,” “ditzy,” or “overly sensitive.”
Girls are less likely to be flagged as having an issue with executive functioning because they are taught to mask their difficulties. They are expected to meet the expectations of the class more than boys (again, the idea that “boys will be boys” hurts so many people) so they hide their hyperactivity by projecting a calm exterior, they might sit quietly even though they may want to squirm, but on the inside their mind may be jumping from idea to idea. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The disruptive child (sometimes) gets the help they need, but the girls that are “behaving” don’t.
Not only do girls get fewer referrals to be tested, but many of the tests themselves are skewed to identify boys. Because the stereotypical image of someone with ADHD is a boy, more research has been done on ADHD with boys and young men. This means that because the research into how to assess ADHD was conducted on boys, the rating scales themselves are based on the behaviors found in boys with ADHD.
Just because many professionals might miss your daughter’s ADHD or might have missed your ADHD when you were a child, doesn’t mean there aren’t signs. Below I’ve included some signs that (1) your daughter might have ADHD and that (2) you as an adult woman might have ADHD even though you weren’t diagnosed as a child.
Signs that your daughter might have ADHD:
Check out the signs below to see if you recognize your daughter.
Homework takes way longer than it should.
She can study and study and study but still doesn’t do well on tests because she is inefficient with studying.
She has difficulty with understanding what she reads (reading comprehension). She may miss details, doesn’t make connections between parts of the text, and might read the same sentence over and over, not realizing that she isn’t taking in the meaning.
She may have difficulty with friendships because she seems to miss social cues.
She forgets things she needs, misplaces important objects like her phone, keys, or books and notebooks for school.
She struggles to complete projects and activities despite being very excited about them when she started.
She is chronically late, struggles to get ready on time and underestimates the amount of time she needs to get ready.
She may talk a lot and seem kind of scattered when she talks. She might hyperfocus on one topic without letting you get a word in or she might flit from one topic to the next without much of a transition.
Signs that you, an adult woman, may have ADHD:
Check out the signs below to see if you recognize yourself.
Everything seems to take a lot longer than it should.
Writing emails and making work presentations takes you so long and the end result might be confusing for others.
You can’t seem to keep your house clean. Dishes sit in the sink for days, maybe weeks, and most other cleaning tasks seem overwhelming.
You have no work-life balance because you feel like you have to work ten times harder than everyone else in order to get everything done for work.
You may get very interested in a new hobby, go all in for a few days, and then lose complete interest in the hobby.
You can go down rabbit holes for hours before you notice that you’ve been distracted.
What does speech therapy have to do with ADHD?
As a speech therapist, I help people communicate. There are many different aspects of communication that are impacted by ADHD, such as speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
Speech Therapy Helps with Speaking
Girls with ADHD can have difficulty contributing equally to conversations, sometimes not pausing enough for others to join in or spacing out and not paying attention when another person is talking. Girls with ADHD might also struggle to tell coherent stories, they might struggle to stay on topic in classroom discussions, and they might become withdrawn if worried that they will “say something wrong.”
Adult women with ADHD might also struggle to contribute in conversations. They might have difficulty getting hyper-focused on a specific topic in a work discussion which keeps a meeting go on longer than necessary. Professional women with ADHD might struggle to stay on task when giving a presentation or might have to put many hours in to make sure their presentation makes sense.
Speech therapy, particularly group therapy, can help girls and women with ADHD improve their skills and confidence in speaking. Speech therapy for ADHD can involve practicing presentations, learning how to tell stories, noticing when they are on or off-topic in a conversation and so much more.
Speech Therapy Helps with Listening
Girls with ADHD can struggle with listening. They might have difficulty paying attention when they aren’t interested in the topic that someone else is talking about, they might have trouble noticing when they aren’t listening, and they might struggle to make comparisons between what they are listening to and something else that isn’t in the here and now.
Adult Women with ADHD might have similar difficulties as girls with ADHD but may have learned strategies to seem like they are listening like nodding and smiling. They might be so good at masking that they don’t even realize when they aren’t fully listening! Alternatively, they might be spending so much energy trying to listen and pay attention that they are fixated on details and miss the forest for the trees.
Speech therapy, especially group therapy, can help girls and women with ADHD practice listening skills and build self-awareness in a shame-free environment.
Speech Therapy Helps with Reading:
My clients with ADHD might not have dyslexia, but they still struggle with reading because they struggle to focus. Those who weren’t diagnosed with ADHD until much later may have been struggling to read for years which may have resulted in them 1) not enjoying reading, 2) not getting practice reading, and 3) not learning the content of what they read.
Girls with ADHD who are currently in school might struggle with reading things over and over again, not being able to get the overall point of what they are reading, and might not be making connections and inferences needed to fully understand what they are reading.
Adult women with ADHD might struggle to understand lengthy emails sent to them, they might have to read something over and over again because they weren’t quite paying attention, and they might get feedback from their colleagues that they seemed to “miss” something important in an email or presentation.
Speech therapy helps girls and women with these reading skills by building self-awareness for spacing out, learning how to visualize while they read, making personal connections to what they are reading, and pulling out the most important information from the text.
Speech Therapy Helps with Writing:
Girls with ADHD can struggle with writing essays for school. They may not understand the writing prompt that their teacher gave them, focusing on some details but missing other key elements. They might not know how to come up with ideas for the essay, might not know how to outline their ideas, and struggle to edit and revise their work, if they remember to do it at all.
Women with ADHD may struggle with writing emails and messages to colleagues, they might struggle to create a coherent and efficient presentation without spending hours and hours of prep time, and they might get feedback that their work is lacking “attention to detail.”
Speech therapy can help women and girls with ADHD by practicing imaging what “done” for a paper or project looks like, making an outline prior to jumping in to writing, and developing personalized checklists to edit their work so it is up to the required standard without spending too much time preparing to make it “perfect.”
What can help girls and women thrive with ADHD?
There are many tools, therapy types, and medications that can help girls and women with ADHD. I’ll write a future blog post specifically about this but first know that you are not alone. There are many parents with daughters who are struggling and there are many adult women who just found out they have ADHD.
Life can be easier for you or your child.
Take a look at some of the books recommended below, google around for yourself, and schedule a free consultation with me to discuss your concerns. I can help you decide if you might want to get an evaluation with a neuropsychologist, join a therapy group that I run, schedule personalized therapy with me, or find a mental health therapist to work with.
I’m starting a group for women with ADHD this February/March of 2022 called Ladies (with ADHD) who Lunch so please set up a consultation with me as soon as possible to see if you would be a good fit for this group!
Do you have ADHD and want to join a group of other women to learn to thrive with ADHD?
Let’s talk about it!
I’d love to help you figure out if my Ladies (with ADHD) Who Lunch group is right for you.
Schedule a free consultation today!
Hi, I’m Hollis, the owner of Mindful Speech.
I’m a speech-language pathologist licensed in Illinois and Colorado.
I specialize in providing speech therapy to help women with ADHD, children, and teens improve language, reading, writing, and executive functioning skills. Now offering in-person sessions in Chicago!
Learn more about me on my About Hollis page.
Further Reading about ADHD in Girls and Women:
Thriving with ADHD Workbook for Teens: Improve Focus, Get Organized, and Succeed
Understanding Girls with AD/HD
A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD: Embrace Neurodiversity, Live Boldly, and Break Through Barriers
Articles that Inspired Me for This Blog: