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REPLAY: S1 Episode 41 – Camouflaging ADHD + Autistic Traits in Girls with Millie Carr [re-release]

REPLAY: S1 EPISODE 41

Camouflaging ADHD + Autistic Traits in Girls with Millie Carr [re-release]

What if the “quiet, organised” girl in the classroom isn’t coping at all?

In this episode of ADHD Mums, I sat down again with the wonderful Millie Carr to dive deep into the hidden world of highly camouflaged ADHD and ASD in girls. If you’ve ever felt like something was “off” with your daughter but couldn’t quite put your finger on it—or if you’ve spent years doubting yourself because professionals said she looks fine at school—this conversation will hit home.

Millie shared her own recent ADHD diagnosis at 35 and how it reframed her entire childhood. As a teacher and a mum of a daughter with both ADHD and autism, she’s seen firsthand how girls mask their struggles, how schools miss the signs, and how devastating it can be when diagnoses are delayed or dismissed.

Sound familiar? That’s masking. And for girls, it often means years of hidden struggles with inattention, perfectionism, forgetfulness, anxiety, and social overwhelm—all brushed aside because they’re “good girls.”

Key Takeaways from Today’s Episode:

What we cover in this episode:

  • Millie’s late ADHD diagnosis and how it changed everything.
  • Why girls are so good at masking symptoms—and why that’s dangerous.

  • Common signs: perfectionism, meltdowns at home, forgetfulness, “quiet compliance.”

  • The difference between boys’ and girls’ ADHD presentations.

  • The broken diagnosis process—gaslighting, delays, and misdiagnosis with anxiety or depression.

  • Why teachers and parents are key to earlier recognition.

  • How masking drains kids (and adults) and what it looks like behind closed doors.

  • Why reframing ADHD as a strength can change everything.

This episode is for you if:

  • You suspect your daughter may have ADHD or ASD but professionals keep dismissing your concerns.

  • You’ve been told “she’s fine at school” while meltdowns erupt at home.

  • You’re curious about the unique ways ADHD shows up in girls versus boys.

  • You’ve struggled with anxiety, perfectionism, or burnout and wondered if it’s more than that.

  • You’re a teacher or parent who wants to better support neurodivergent kids.

Transcript:

Jane McFadden:

Hello and welcome back to ADHD Mums. In this podcast, we tackle the tough, often unspoken realities of motherhood, neurodiversity and mental health. Hello and welcome to the next episode of ADHD Mums.

I have literally lost sleep with excitement, which I know I say that every time, but most of the people that I interview are just so exciting. I have brought in Millie Karr back. Now, she did the episode on the neurodiverse classroom, which, oh my God, I loved every second of it.

And I’ve been implementing a lot of the things that we have talked about. At the end of that episode, we started to side off into highly camouflaged subtypes of ADHD in girls, which Millie’s particularly passionate about. So welcome Millie, I’m super excited.

Millie Carr:

Thank you so much, Jen. I’ve been really looking forward to this as well. Yeah, really keen to talk about girls.

Jane McFadden:

Let’s just kick off Millie about why you’re passionate about this particular subject.

Millie Carr:

It’s very personal for me. So I’ve just been recently diagnosed only a couple of months ago. I was aware that I probably did have ADHD probably in the last year and a half, but I was only diagnosed really recently and throughout my own diagnosis process and going back and thinking about myself, I just recognised so many things that I didn’t realise.

I’ve just kind of reframed my whole childhood. Everything that’s kind of happened to me as a child and through school just really resonated with me. And I just really wish that I had have known a little bit sooner. And as a teacher, it’s only since being diagnosed myself that I’ve been able to, I guess, recognise some of the more subtle things that not everyone can recognise when you’ve got a masking girl.

Mainly girls—boys can do it too—but it’s very, very common with girls to be able to mask symptoms and the struggles that we’re having in the classroom. My daughter’s also diagnosed autistic and ADHD, but again, we didn’t diagnose that when she was younger because I missed some of the key kind of signs back then.

So really passionate about it because I just think it’s such an important thing to get out there so that people are able to recognise it earlier. So, you know, I was 35 when I was diagnosed. I know you were later as well, Jane. It’s just, you know, there’s all the extra difficulties that have come from finding out now at 35.

So much stuff could have been put in place earlier if I had have known earlier and I would have been easier on myself earlier as well.

Jane McFadden:

So you’re really passionate about getting the word out there about different presentations with girls. So I suppose Millie, let’s take a step back. What are we looking for with these girls?

Millie Carr:

So the girls that are very similar to myself and that are highly masking—and I’ve noticed it more and more obviously now I know—the things that I’ve noticed are inattention. So a lot of the time, these girls are not paying attention, but they are sitting on the floor, they’re doing the thing that’s expected, they’re crossing their legs, they are quiet, but they are not paying attention to what’s going on.

So they get back to the table and then they’re just like, well, what am I doing? I don’t know what to do. And then they’re kind of asking people around, trying to figure out or copy what everyone’s doing till they can figure out what they need to do. And then they might get started. That’s one kind of really element of it.

Another part is they’re often the perfectionist children. I find writing’s a really tricky one for them to do. They cannot make a start. So all the other kids are like, you know, doing stuff and they go and revise and fix it up. They can’t write anything because they’re scared it’s going to be bad, wrong, the spelling’s not going to be good enough. So they just do nothing.

So you get to the end of 30 minutes and you go past them and you’re like, what have you done? And they’re like, I don’t know. They’re like, I was going to start, but they just kind of get really stuck. So they just don’t start something.

Or there’s the kids that really struggle with things that they’re not interested in. So like, you know, they’re really great at like reading, they’ll be fabulous with that, but then the math part will be terrible. So they don’t even like try in math and they just kind of talk to the person next to them and go, don’t get it done.

Also the emotions and the outside play is massive. And the social situations with these girls, they tend to do things to get some dopamine or get that little fix. So they kind of picket fights or they say things that they don’t have that control of what they’re saying, that impulse control.

They’ll say something and then that kind of alienates them out from the other girl. Or they’re just girls that are so quiet because they’re so scared to actually say anything because they don’t want to say anything wrong that they barely got any friends because they don’t know how to go up and make that kind of move to friendship. So a lot of these times it’s the really quiet girls.

They’re generally struggling with something academically at some area, you know, whether it’s doing homework, whether it’s things that they’re not interested in. There’s one area, but they’re also doing fabulous stuff in other areas. So they’re, you know, performing art, which would be amazing because they’re able to act it out and they’re really good at that, but then they’re not great at like actually doing, you know, writing kind of things.

So there’s kids that have got areas in learning that they’re really fabulous at, areas that they’re not. They’re very forgetful. Maybe they’re not organized. They’ve got books everywhere. They lose the sheet that you’ve given them 15 minutes ago, stuff like that. They’re the things that kind of, yeah, I’m seeing more and more with these kind of kids again that I wouldn’t have picked up as being ADHD a few years ago.

I would have just been like, oh, they’re really forgetful. Oh goodness. They’d lose their head if it wasn’t screwed on. That’s the stuff that you hear about these kinds of kids.

And they sometimes hold it together all day at school. So at school, you don’t notice too much of it, but at home, the parents are coming in and saying at home, they get home and there’s like a massive meltdown. Like they are losing it at home and we don’t know what’s going on.

And then we’re not seeing that at school. There’s no meltdowns at school. They just sit there. Then they go home and feel terrible because they’ve done nothing. They feel like they’re dumb or bad at something, or they’re not listening. Why can’t I listen? They’re trying really hard, but they just can’t do it, do the thing that they’re doing.

So they’re the kind of really key things that I see and resonated for me too. That was like my experience at school. My daughter as well, she’s very highly masking at school. And then at home has those major meltdowns and stuff when she gets in the door. So yeah, they’re the signs that I would look out for if your child’s coming home and presenting like that in a classroom.

Jane McFadden:

Okay, beautiful. I love what you said. I’m going to add, I think two more things because you’ve just nailed all that.

The one that I was going to add as an extra was I feel like there’s a lot of negative thinking as well. So they come home and they tell you about every single bad thing that’s happened in the day. I feel like there’s some anxiety and negative interpretation that happens with girls, which may or may not actually be real.

And it’s hard as a parent to know if it’s real or not. Is that child actually bullying my kid or is she just walking past and then she’s going, oh, she’s ignoring me. And I think as well, so often I think they’re called bossy, domineering.

My son calls some of the girls in his class that are undiagnosed, but you kind of walk around and have your own thoughts. He calls them bossy boot or mean, which they’re not mean, but he says that he doesn’t like to be told what to do. And I’m looking around going, probably a lot of those girls have ADHD and they’re just trying to help him or whatever.

And he’s taking it as, I don’t want your direction. So I suppose for a second, Millie, let’s just talk about this. So with your daughter, I know with mine, it took me about how many years? Two at least.

With not fighting, I wouldn’t say fighting because the teachers were amazing, but having discussions for at least two years. And it was only when I was diagnosed myself by a treating psychologist, I didn’t seek it out. I had no idea.

This treating psychologist said to me, this is what you have. Then I started to go, well, I’m raising a mini me. This is what I’m hearing and seeing. Maybe I’m starting to put this together, right? Like I had no help. I literally had to put it together on my own and then Google it.

So I suppose what I’m saying is, how did you go with your daughter? Like from a teacher’s point of view, you’ve got the parents coming and going, they’ve got the meltdowns at home. This is what I’m seeing. And the teacher might be stuck old school as well. Like how does that work?

Millie Carr:

Yeah, it’s very interesting because whenever I spoke about what she was doing at home, it was so extreme. Like she’s been hard work for me at home since she was about like one and a half, two. Like she argues constantly and goes around in circles and loops and the meltdowns happen as soon as she walks in the door.

But at school, absolutely, especially in primary school, she was an angel. Like was a complete angel, do her work. She’s quite bright as well. So she actually does really well in most subject areas.

When I actually wanted to get her diagnosed, you have to give, obviously, the form to the teacher as well. So it matches. So what we’re seeing at home is the same as what we’re seeing at school and it doesn’t match.

It didn’t match. So whatever they were saying, they were like, no, no, we don’t see any of that. Like nothing at all. Only anxiety. You would often have sore tummies. So she’d be needing to go to the sickbay with a sore tummy.

And it generally was some kind of anxiety about something that was going on kind of in the classroom or with friendships a lot of the time. But like, it’s really hard when you’re having those conversations, I’d be like, well, this is what I’m seeing at home.

And I think it was easier because for primary school, she actually attended the school that I was working at. So there’s a difference there in that they knew me professionally as a teacher as well as a parent. So when I was having these conversations, it was a little bit easier, I think, in that they kind of believed me.

I guess, I think I’ve heard other teachers go, well, that’s ridiculous. What are they doing at home? Because we’re not seeing anything like that at school. Whereas often when parents come in and tell me that, you know, this is what we’re seeing at home and I’m not seeing that at school, I kind of go, okay, well, what’s going on?

Because I know that that meltdown stuff can happen when you go home and there can be that flip and overwhelm from the whole day and keeping it together. And then when you go home, so the conversation, I think pushing for it like you’ve been doing, Jane, is really important.

You know, standing up and advocating for them when they can’t advocate themselves, very important. Saying, no, look, this is what it is. This is what we’re seeing. And what’s happening at school is causing the stuff that I’m seeing at home.

So what can you do to help support this so that she doesn’t come home and scream at me for three hours? Because that’s what was happening to me. So I was trying to ask them to get her to put some things in place to help her at school.

So when she got home, it wasn’t just all unleashed on me, which is what it happens like a lot of the time. So some of the things that they put in place, like they were regularly checking you, they weren’t doing that. They were just assuming that she was fine and just leaving her to her own devices.

Friendships mainly for her is what set her off a lot of the time. So talking about social things, social scripts that she could say to kind of talk to her friends and that stuff kind of managed to ease her anxiety a little bit so that then she wasn’t coming home all the time and like screaming at me straight away.

So yeah, just kind of talking to them about what they can do at school. So then that home time, that home stuff, even if they’re not seeing it at school, what’s going on at school and how can you change?

Even that perception thing you were talking about, you know, they have a very different perception of what’s happening in the classroom. So that teaching of that though, that like, that’s how you saw it, but this person saw it like they’ve been putting themselves in other people’s shoes as well and teaching that.

It’s all teaching, you know, these things don’t come naturally tough. So it’s trying to teach them how other people could be feeling and that maybe that person wasn’t looking at you that way. Maybe that person was just looking because they’re tired, you know, and could that be a reason? Yes, it could be. Oh, maybe they’re not angry at you.

And I get that because I sometimes pick up on people’s facial expressions and their attitude. I can really tell if I walk in and I’m like, something’s off with someone. So we do have that intuition with that.

So you can pick it up. But sometimes we do misjudge, it could be just something personal with them and not, you know, they relate it back to themselves a lot when they’re younger. So yeah, I would keep going back with your teachers and just being like, this is what we’re seeing.

And it’s probably because something’s happening at school and we’re not dealing with it in the setting before we come home.

 

Jane McFadden:

Yeah. And I think as well, one of the things that really gets me is that if you are proactive enough as a parent and you can pick this up, let’s say you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, yeah, look, I have ADHD. I thought it was only my sons, maybe my daughter does as well. I wonder what to do.

If you have to try and source a diagnosis, right, for a child—like I know, for example, in Tasmania, like literally people are having to… So to get a diagnosis can be really difficult.

It can be incredibly expensive, time consuming, right? Then you finally get there and you find that they have no understanding of what we’re talking about. So I think if you’re going to make that big leap of faith and you’ve got time, money heavily invested, I would always personally jump on Facebook and say, this is my postcode. Where can I go to get a diagnosis, you know, for this?

The other thing that I find is clinical psychs, females, a lot of them do have ASD and ADHD, some of them, that’s their special interest. They diagnose women and girls really well. I know it’s more expensive because you have to do that report first, but then you can take that report to the psychiatrist.

Is it a longer way to do it? Sometimes, but if you’re just relying on a psychiatrist or a pediatrician that you don’t know, you might get turned away. So God, does it have to be any harder? But yes, it does.

What do you think of the diagnosis process?

Millie Carr:

I was going to actually go into that. My brain was thinking that exact same thing. So at the moment, you know, I’ve got a student that is in a class that I’m working with. I’ve had an inkling that she has got ADHD. She’s been diagnosed with dyslexia and then was referred to do some further testing.

But even the parents, so they spoke about some things with us that really relates to what we’re kind of talking about, at home and issues at home. But then when they filled out the form for their home form, I was reading some of it and going, this is not going to get her diagnosed. They’re going to turn her away.

I could see it. I saw it and I was like, this is not going to actually… she won’t be diagnosed with ADHD now, later, but it won’t be now because that form that the parents have given doesn’t actually support things they’re telling me happens at home anyway.

And, you know, even myself, when I went to get diagnosed, the first appointment I had with a psychiatrist, he told me to take anxiety medication because it appeared that I had anxiety and was scoring quite high for anxiety and depression, which is very, very common for females.

They are the co-existing things that we get diagnosed with first or for many, many years until we finally get a diagnosis. If you don’t keep pushing, then you don’t. But he told me to do that. I actually refused and said, no, because he didn’t even do the actual, you know, the ADHD test. He didn’t do that. He just asked me questions and said, you’re scoring really high for anxiety and depression.

I want you to start anxiety medication, see how they go and then come back. And I said, no, I actually don’t want to take anxiety medication first because my anxiety and depression, I think, is highly linked to the way I’m managing my ADHD, which it definitely is.

I’ve started medication now and it definitely changes everything. It’s changed everything already about the way I’m feeling about myself, the way I can do things and focus on tasks that I don’t love all the time and get that stuff that’s important for my life to get done.

So that anxiety and depression stuff, that diagnosis, it’s happening with kids. If you have a student like your daughter coming in with that anxiety, that’s what they’re going to get diagnosed with all the time. Unless you find someone like you said, Jane, that is experienced and knows about girls with ADHD.

And a lot of medical people in the medical world are not on top of what we’re talking about now, these different representations. They’re not really looking and going, oh, that’s definitely probably a girl with ADHD. They’re not looking at that and they’re not getting diagnosed and being pushed aside and given anxiety medication.

And it’s not helping them because anxiety isn’t the problem. It’s the way their ADHD and the way they’re managing that. And it can definitely have coexisting conditions of anxiety and depression alongside your ADHD for sure.

But a lot of the time, that stuff’s being diagnosed without any talk about ADHD or autism or anything else that probably is actually the root cause to actually making all of this other stuff happen. All this anxiety and depression is really linked to how we’re managing our neurodivergent brains.

So I think the diagnosis process is not perfect. I saw a telehealth person to actually get in quickly because the wait was next year in March. And I had just decided I wanted to get it done. I knew I was going to be diagnosed. It was no doubt in my mind that that’s what it was. So I just pushed telehealth-wise.

But people that want to find someone that really understands, and the person that I was referred to, she was supposedly fabulous and made you feel really fabulous, but I just couldn’t wait that long. So the process is ridiculous. The lengthy wait period across Australia, ridiculous.

Otherwise, then you’re going into telehealth and the way I got diagnosed, and it wasn’t a nice process. I didn’t feel great about it. I mean, I feel great that I’ve been diagnosed and now my GP is looking after my medication and ongoing support at the moment, but it wasn’t a nice process.

I didn’t feel great about it. I felt like I had to really prove that’s what it was. And it just didn’t feel very great. So the whole diagnosis process for adults is not great. So let alone young girls and students that are still in school.

And it’s just really hard because if the parents don’t know, if they don’t know about these things themselves, it’s hard to push. Do you mean like people like yourself and me and other women that are already diagnosed are like, yeah, we know that’s what it is. We can see it. You can push a little bit harder.

If you don’t know, you can’t push and you’re like, oh yeah, they’ve got anxiety and that’s not it. And then they’ll find out later when they’re an adult and there’s all these other things that have probably happened because it hasn’t been diagnosed or helped earlier.

So the diagnosis process I think is quite terrible at the moment. And I think that there needs to be a bit of a rejig of like the entire, the criteria, you know, everything just in general needs to be kind of modified and changed. Yeah. Cause at the moment it’s not enough and not good enough for those that, you know, don’t have those stereotypical kind of disruptive traits.

They’ll diagnose the boys that are disruptive in no time, but you know, not the girls that are just sitting there struggling.

 

Jane McFadden:

Yeah. Oh, look, if you and I just like, we agree on pretty much everything, don’t we? But I did an episode called Medication Psychiatrist, and I absolutely agree with you.

I just went like, I know what I have. I’ve already been told by my treating psychologist, I’ve got a family history. This makes absolute sense to me.

So I did a quick, quick shit bust kind of telehealth system, which I agree is completely awful. Not great, but kind of gets you what you need. I’ve had a couple of friends recently who have gone to an in-person psychiatrist because they want to do it and I’m air quoting properly.

But they’ve actually been really let down with the properly because the properly is like, they just read out, you know, do you feel tired in the morning? Whatever it is. And they just go, yes, no. And the personal experience that someone might be expecting is not there necessarily with what I’ve seen anyway.

And I’ve seen a lot of psychiatrists in my time. Why? Because I was misdiagnosed a million bloody times. And I kept going back trying to figure out what was wrong with me and other air quotes, what’s wrong with me.

And I think the part that really pisses me off is that when parents who are trying their bloody best, identify something in their daughter or child, whatever, and they’re turned away or given anti-anxiety first or whatever, try and treat the symptom. That makes no sense, right? That’s like going, oh, I’ve got a broken arm, but let’s just like bandage up your fingers and see if that works. Like you’re not treating the actual problem.

And I get angry because this happened to me. I was heavily medicated. They kept turning up, turning up, turning up when I was a child, because it’s like, oh, she’s still not getting better. Let’s not try something new. Let’s just keep going and give her more of it.

It’s taking so many uppers and downers, right? And then I’m going all these therapies and my poor parents probably spent a lot of money in all of this stuff. And then I did weekly psychology that my mom had to drive me to, right?

And then what were we doing? We were doing anxiety treatment that I couldn’t really do. Like the interventions didn’t make sense to me. I had an incredibly hyperactive brain.

And they’re going lay down and this is just the worst. And then I was just there going, there’s something wrong with me because I can’t, like I’m getting a lot of help. I’ve got a lot of appointments. Everybody’s telling me I’m not doing better. I’m not feeling better. Why is that? Are there something wrong with me innately?

But, you know, if you had have given me some, my brother was taking anti-HD medication. I didn’t get any, you know, that just pisses me off a little bit. But anyway, I’ve gotten on a rant.

 

Millie Carr:

How amazing would it have been to, when you were younger, like your brother, have had the medication and just seeing what the difference would have made back then.

Like, I just, I always think back to that time and think to like the person that I was and how hard I tried all the time. I tried so hard to do really well. And the extra effort that I had to put in that I didn’t realize everyone else was putting in to actually just look like I was doing a reasonably good job was just so much.

And I just would love to be able to go back and just see what difference that would have made to just my general wellbeing and mental health. Because yeah, I think when you’re in that high school phase, you just, it’s such a hard time for everyone, but let alone people that are undiagnosed neurodivergent people. Cause it’s just, yeah, it’s a hard, hard time.

You’re not diagnosed. You’ve got no help. Even when you were saying about like being told to meditate, I can’t meditate either. I listened to like 30 seconds and my brain is already off in like a million other directions.

I’ve tried a million different yoga things and stuff to settle me down and I just can’t do it. And now I know why. And I feel like that makes a whole lot of sense, but like you just feel shit always. Cause you’re like, I just try so hard. Why can’t I do what everybody else does?

Like they make it so easy just to go pay your bills. That’s like an easy thing to do. But it’s not an easy thing to do when you have ADHD. So just how amazing would it be to go back and just kind of do that?

So that’s why we can’t do that. We can do this for our girls that are coming through now. We can give them the support and help. And not everyone needs to be medicated. Like maybe they try it, at least giving them the option to try it and be like, ah, this has made a massive difference for me. Well, maybe not. These other strategies kind of work better for me.

But just the knowing, I think the knowing is so important. And yeah, it’s just kind of so hard to get diagnosed, get that support. Back then, right now, it still is the same for girls at the moment. We’re getting better at it. 30 years ago, no one would have mentioned any girl had ADHD.

Now we know there’s like, it’s a one to three ratio for girls to boys, but it’s not good enough because it’s not. It’s pretty much half, half when they’re adults, do you know what I mean? So it’s like, yeah, there’s like two thirds of girls sitting there in the classroom that are just not diagnosed and just sitting there struggling. It’s really, really annoying.

So I’m quite on the same page with you about that. Like it’s just, yeah, so annoying. And I’d love for girls coming through now to have that different experience, have that help earlier.

 

Jane McFadden:

I’m not in the health system, but I do think there’s a real big problem there with if I take my daughter to the GP with some anxiety, they can give her anxiety medication, right? Okay.

You can’t take them anywhere else because there’s nowhere to go. So they either suffer silently and you wait maybe to be gaslit when you get there, you don’t know. My wish that I would have is that maybe a clinical psych could work with a GP to prescribe stimulants medication because I just think the psychiatrists are overworked anyway, right? Like the pediatricians are overworked.

There’s a gap. Why not let our clinical psychs work in with a GP? For me, knowing my GP and at the clinical site we use, I reckon that would be a really great treatment protocol.

 

Millie Carr:

I actually am. My GP is monitoring my medication and stuff at the moment. So in Victoria, I’m not sure every state’s a bit different, but the psychiatrist has kind of sent his recommendations and stuff to my GP and my GP had to apply for something. So he can kind of monitor and gauge.

So I go back and see him probably once a month and just kind of talk about how I’m feeling and what it’s like. And he’s allowed to up and lower and change medications as well. But I have to regularly see the psych in between to just kind of clarify and modify that.

I’d much prefer it. My GP is lovely. I know he really cares about me. I know he really wants to ask questions and like, you know, I know him better. So it just kind of feels better than it did going to just a psychiatrist on the telehealth.

They won’t do that with kids though. And this is where I think the clinical psychologist would be able to be that treating professional because the problem that you’ve got at the moment is let’s say I’m being gaslit for two years until I get diagnosed myself. I then talk to the psychologist and go, can you check out my daughter? He looks at her and goes, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I then have to go and find someone else to diagnose her. I’ve got a pediatrician that I’ve been waiting to see for a year. The appointment is in a month. God help me how I’m going to go there because I’m going to be walking in with the clinical psychologist report, with all the treatment that I’m already doing that’s working in my mind.

I don’t necessarily want to medicate straight up, but I would like to have a conversation and be on a list. So if and when I need to do that, I don’t have to wait a year. So that’s all well and good, but I am very aware that this pediatrician will probably look at this report and go, that’s nice and put it aside and make her own assessment or his own assessment.

But I think the part is that I have a lot of faith in the clinical psychologist. I think that they do incredible job. The assessors that I’ve seen are incredible and I think they should be able to work with a GP. That’s just my personal opinion because I mean, how many years has a psych got to go to uni to be a clinical psych? I think about six.

Then they’ve got to do placements, they’ve got to do supervision, like it’s so intense, right? For them to then be able to diagnose and then, I mean, plus as well, the clinical psychs can get your child on the NDIS. The reports are accepted.

So we’re on the NDIS at the moment with speech and language delay and a lot of other stuff from a clinical psych. Pediatrician only needed for medication. So why can the clinical psych not work with the GP?

Because if the clinical psychs are the ones that know what highly camouflaged ADHD in girls look like, you know why? Because they have it, most of them. Most of them are passionate because that’s their area. And if we pay two and a half grand for a report, why can’t they work with our GP? That to me makes no sense.

We add in someone with a huge waiting list to then check off something. Anyway, I’m getting on a rant, but I just think that this is why they’re undiagnosed. The diagnosis pathway is horrendous. Then you get people that have to go back and back and back.

Not everyone has all that money and time. Also, sometimes you’ve only got one shot. You finally get someone to go and go to seek help. They get turned away. That’s it. Label, done, tick.

 

Jane McFadden:

No, you don’t have that. I interviewed Jenny Cleary about her daughter a while ago in the Australian school system. And she went to an assessment psych when her daughter was really young.

So maybe that was part of it. And they said, no, she doesn’t have autism, even though Jenny thought she did. And then what happened later on, it became a bit more apparent and Jenny went back.

But for a good five years there, she was going, no, you don’t have that. I’ve already checked. So in fairness to her, she’d already checked. So if she hadn’t have been so proactive, he would have just left it.

 

 

 

Millie Carr:

Yeah, you’re right. And that’s the problem. If you don’t know to go back and push like we do, I was quite pushy with my daughter. I knew when she was in early primary school, but not everyone probably has that same awareness of it either.

So if someone, a professional, is telling you, no, they don’t have that, what are you supposed to do? They’re the professional. They’re the ones that are telling you no. So you kind of go, okay.

So if that’s happened to people, it’s not their fault. They’ve been told no. But if you’re still seeing stuff, going back and just advocating again and saying, no, this is not right, I think that’s so important too.

Because yeah, you get that no, but my confidence in some professionals, and there are some that are fabulous. There are some that are really fabulous, but some of the professionals in the medical field are not on top of all the stuff at the moment and they need to update what they’re doing.

Because sending kids away and saying they’ve got anxiety, giving them anxiety medication instead of being diagnosed for whatever it actually probably is, is not good enough. And I think that it’s definitely making the whole process for young girls harder, longer. They don’t get diagnosed until later.

And then all these other associated problems come from that stuff. So yeah, completely agree. It’s a tricky system at the moment and there needs to be a bit of education across the board on what you’re looking for.

 

Jane McFadden:

The other thing that I was going to mention as a positive, because I know I can get on a negative rant, but a positive note, in the US they have started screening juvenile offenders and girls in eating disorder clinics for ADHD.

So there is a very strong correlation between ADHD and juvenile offending and also eating disorders. I think that’s fabulous.

 

Millie Carr:

Yeah, I’ve heard the same kind of thing. I think eating disorders is a very massive link, again, thinking about girls. And I know for myself, that’s a big thing for me.

I’ve often had so many issues and roller coasters with emotional eating when I’m not really feeling great, that kind of stuff. And I think screening for people that have those issues is absolutely fabulous.

And I think also empowering teachers to see it as well, because teachers are the ones that see the kids a lot. You’re at home with your child as well, teachers are seeing those kids too. So as a positive, I think if we work on the teachers, so you’ve got the medical profession, that’s always something that I can’t really contribute to, that’s something that needs to be changing.

But teaching, if we teach teachers what tools are for, they do it with boys. If we see a boy disrupting, being disobedient, they bring parents in, we have a discussion, we refer them off to a GP for a referral for a pediatrician. That happens constantly.

It doesn’t happen as much for these girls with these kind of symptoms that we talked about earlier in the episode. So I think there’s a key thing there, that kind of stuff, similar kind of thing to what they’re doing there in America, screening people that are doing these kind of things, but also teaching the people that are with these students and kids what it looks like across the board.

So you can pick up girls and boys, different kind of presentations at that time when they’re in school to stop them even getting to that juvenile offending or eating disorder point. I think the teachers are a really big key in this, and teachers knowing about what to look for, and then being able to call parents in and say, look, I’m seeing this and this.

You know, as teachers, we can’t actually say, I think it’s this, but we can be like, look, there are some barriers. These are the behaviors we’re seeing. I’ll write you a letter. You can take that to your pediatrician. Those conversations aren’t happening for those girls, particularly that are inattentive or are just showing anxiety.

A lot of the time the teacher’s like, oh, she’s got a bit of anxiety. They’re doing reasonably well at school. Parents aren’t called. But I think, yeah, we need to be really conscious of the small little hints we’re seeing and bring the parents in early.

The teachers are a big, big key. I think if we teach the teachers what to look for, it will help. Parents know, then they can go, you know, find a professional in the medical field that works for them. That’s a positive prudentity of stuff.

But I think if we know about it and teachers know about it, it’ll help catch those kids before they get to high school or adulthood, and then they’re not diagnosed.

 

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think if we keep talking about it, then when the teacher hopefully does approach and says, hey, this is what I’m seeing, the parent doesn’t see it as a negative or as a, you know, my child isn’t doing well, or there’s something wrong with them. It’s like, oh, really? Okay. I didn’t know that.

Like, it’d be great to have the response to be not defensive because I can imagine as a teacher saying that to a parent, they could interpret it negatively when it’s not necessarily.

Millie Carr:

No, it’s never negative. And I can’t speak for all teachers. There’s obviously varying levels of people. But when we bring parents in normally, conversations that I generally have are that, look, we’re seeing these things and they’re barriers to their learning or barriers to their ability to socialise or thrive.

Like, it’s things that we want them to do for them. You know, how can we make them thrive at school, thrive at home and be the best versions of themselves? So that’s kind of how teachers should be broaching that kind of stuff to parents.

But hopefully if teachers bring it up, the parents are like, okay, teacher’s saying this, I want the best for my child. Let’s go and do that and not be negative about it.

Because it’s not a negative thing. When you learn about your brain, you can work with your brain. And that’s what parents need to understand. We’re not trying to like tell them, well, you know, the bad, life-changing, end of the world thing. It’s like, let’s help them. Let’s try and give them support.

 

Jane McFadden:

And that’s all it is. I have a couple of theories which are totally like just personal opinions that, you know, people that are really into rugby, like MMA fighting, like some of those really elite athletes, when they interview them afterwards, I’m like, hmm. And it’s not a negative.

It just means that to have that level of drive, to be in your early twenties and hit the Olympics and not go backpacking, not go out drinking, not go sleeping around, not doing drugs, to have that level of focus, I don’t think is a, and I’m using air quotes again, normal thing to do.

So some of these incredibly successful people are actually neurodivergent in my personal opinion. So I think success is, I actually do think it is essential in some ways.

Half of the things that I’ve done, which would be seen as accomplishments, have been because of my hyper-focus. Because I was interested in it and I have delved so deep into it that I’ve been able to produce something really amazing. I’m quite creative. It’s my ADHD.

Like without my ADHD, I don’t think I would have been able to do some of these things. I love learning and I don’t think I would have that passion for learning and wanting to find out as much as I can about something if I didn’t have ADHD.

And I think me saying that I have ADHD, you know, reading my book, telling the kids, explaining what that is and what it looks like for me, that’s probably a really positive. I talk a lot about it. It’s a strength.

It’s kind of flipping these things that we’re calling disruptive. Well, they’re actually probably got a really fabulous thought that they want to like share because it’s really exciting to them. Or they’re hyper-focused and they get distracted because they’re focused on whatever they’re doing.

That’s because they’re doing something really great there and they’re going to come up with a fabulous thing. So it’s flipping it and making it their strengths. A lot of these things are strengths.

There are some things that definitely are barriers and that cause problems in this neurotypical world, that a lot of those things are strengths and there are a lot of positive, fabulous people, like you’re saying, athletes, movie stars, you know, amazing scientists and people that come up with creative solutions.

These people are probably neurodivergent. A lot of them, you know, we have those fabulous brains that think different and the different thinking is great. It’s great thinking.

 

Jane McFadden:

Okay. So let’s just say if someone’s listening to this and they’re still thinking about it, I reckon we should put some notes in there. So notes around maybe a self-test. There’s self-tests for ADHD for yourself that you can do. You can also do them for your kids.

The other thing is as well, I just thought, just highlight real quick before we go, is that when you are doing the self-test, you need to be aware that you can’t rely on prompting. So for example, if it says, are you late all the time? Or is your child late all the time? Okay. Maybe they are on time, but what have you put in place to get them there on time?

So if you have to remind them 50 times and then you’ve got to remind yourself 50 times and everything’s a mess and you’re looking for shoes, but you do arrive on time, maybe we’ll look at that as prompting and scaffolding and anxiety and have a look at what that looks like first.

I know I’ve used this example a couple of times, but you know, maybe there’s a lot of episodes these days, but there is the example of two students. So for example, they arrive, there’s a male and female. So let’s say the boy and the girl are both given homework and the homework is due on, you know, I’m just talking crap like Friday.

So it’s due on Friday when they get to school. Both ADHD students, boy and girl, leave it till Thursday night, right? They then, the boy goes, remembers and goes, yeah, it’s due. I don’t want to tell mom. I don’t want to get into trouble. I don’t want to have to do it. I don’t care. I’m not going to do it.

And they arrive on Friday morning and they haven’t done their homework. Red flag for teacher if that happens enough times. Conversations are going to be had because that was reminded and over and over and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Girl, girl gets to six o’clock, let’s say Thursday night and goes, oh my God, I am now hit with anxiety because my procrastination has meant that I have not started yet. But my society’s pressure to be a good girl and be perfectionist has meant that now I will disclose to my mother who probably is going to be angry with me.

But my concern of the teacher being angry with me and doing the wrong thing and getting into trouble now overrides the wrath of my mother. So they then disclose to their mother and let’s say their mom goes, oh, moan, moan, moan. But they actually do stay up and make sure that the daughter has it done.

Daughter hands in homework to the teacher on time, no worries. And teacher goes, great, well done. Then that happens constantly throughout the year. And then the parent says at some point to the teacher, hey, I think my child might have ADHD or blah, blah, blah. This is what I’m seeing at home.

Teacher goes, wow, I just don’t see any of that at home. For me, that’s masking and prompting. So have a look at it when you’re self-assessment test. Think about it quite deeply if you can.

If you didn’t actually scaffold and help your child so much, would that child have that homework done? That girl, no. If the mom didn’t help, in my mind, no, they wouldn’t be able to get it done. They’d be in the same boat as the boy. But you can see how one gets diagnosed and one doesn’t.

 

Millie Carr:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. Or you do it so far in advance knowing that you’re bad with time. That’s another thing. That’s something that I do a lot.

You do it so far in advance or you start it like the week before and have anxiety every day doing little bits, slaving over it when it only would have taken like an hour, but it ends up taking you six. But you get it done, but you think about it so much because you know you might leave it to the last minute if you don’t think about it.

So that’s another little one that is very highly masking that you don’t see because you see the fabulous finished product, but you don’t see all that extra stuff that happens at home. I’m still now where even though I know I have ADHD and that I’ve told people, I still do it because that pressure, like you said, that societal pressure to be good and do my job well, I just do so much extra stuff at home that no one else does just to kind of make it look great before I get in.

 

Jane McFadden:

Oh, I absolutely agree. And I think that’s one of the problems, not problems, but it’s definitely an element to it. So if I disclose to people that I have ADHD, which I do pretty regularly now, a lot of people will like really second guess me. They’ll look at me twice.

And one of the reasons is, is because you write the anxieties. And that’s such a female presentation of it because a lot of people think I’m really efficient and I’m not. It’s just anxiety-driven stress. Wow.

 

Millie Carr:

Yeah. People at work tell me that I’m organized. They think I’m one of the most organized people at work. And that is ridiculous. Like I laugh so hard. People say that I’m because I am not organized, but I am very good at making it look like I’m organized.

I’ve got it all organized at work. But a lot of the time I do that for work. And then I come home and my life at home is like shit. Everything just falls to shit when I get home. I can’t remember appointments and get things on time.

But at work, I put so much effort in to have that, just like the anxiety of looking like I’m not capable. It’s so big for me. I get so stressed about it that I overdo it, over-prepare it. And then I go home and I am exhausted, wrecked, and can’t give any energy to my family, tasks that are just mundane at home, all of that stuff.

So yeah, that’s a massive part of it, the masking. That’s why most people don’t think that when I say that I’ve got it, they can’t quite see it initially. And they ask me, what are the things that I have to go through? What we’re just talking about now.

So people don’t see that stuff. They don’t see the behind the scenes part. My mask is on and the perfectionist is out and I’m amazingly doing stuff. But underneath, I’m drowning a lot of the time. And that’s the masking part of it.

And it’s, yeah, it’s very hard and it’s so exhausting. And yeah, it’s just, it’s a hard thing to do when you get yourself into that routine of doing it from a child and wanting to please and be a good girl and do all the right things. It’s a really hard thing to break.

I’m trying to break it now and I can’t at the moment. I don’t know how to stop it. I know I need to for my own mental health, but I don’t know how to stop wanting and that anxiety and do everything really well for everyone else and look like I’m doing it really well. It’s so hard.

 

Jane McFadden:

Oh, exactly. And if that psychologist hadn’t have like stepped me through it and convinced me, like he literally had to convince me and I was denying it the whole way that I had it right. Because for me, it’s normal.

Like having anxiety and being an overachiever and stressing and worry, I thought that was actually normal. I have no memory of ever being any different. So I would look at my daughter and be like, she’s an overachiever. She’s successful. What’s wrong with her? She’s great.

Until I started taking medication, even when I started this podcast, I’m going to be honest, I didn’t think I had anxiety. I really didn’t. And then I started taking the right medication and I was like, oh, I feel quite relaxed. And I didn’t even know that that was a thing.

So if you as a parent are looking at your child going, well, she’s pretty normal. And I hate using the word, but that’s just a normal kid. Yeah. It’s normal for you. It’s normal for you, but you don’t know any better.

 

Millie Carr:

Yeah. It’s a lot of people that are like neurodivergent being diagnosed now. It’s like they don’t notice it in their child because they probably are too. Because what you all do in your family and like your grandparents and everyone does that, but actually it’s not what people do.

Neurodivergent people do that. And we all kind of flock together. It’s like common for you to find, we all find each other and we all get along with each other because we are similar and we share that. So you hang around people that are neurodivergent.

So it’s very interesting. And it’s tricky though, because if you think it’s normal, how do you know what you’re looking for?

 

Jane McFadden:

Oh, totally. And then I talked to someone recently and she’s like, oh, everyone’s neurodivergent now. Like it’s just, she’s like, oh, that’s just a normal. Everyone is. Everybody I know is.

And I said to her, I think everybody in your world is. I don’t think the whole world is. I think you have created your own neurodivergent group of friends and family. And that’s lovely for you. But I said, just be aware that when you go out into the community, because her kids weren’t quite at school yet.

It’s like, just be aware that when you get to school, that’s not actually going to be the case necessarily. Because she honestly thought that everybody, because everyone she knew was, I was like, no, no, that’s just your special place that you’ve made for yourself.

She’s gravitated to the people that resonate with her and that have probably similarities to her. It’s so funny.

 

Millie Carr:

Yeah. I think it’s, we kind of flock together a little bit. So sometimes, yeah, you’ve got to kind of look out and go, actually, most people don’t do that. Yeah.

 

Jane McFadden:

Yeah. And then every now and again, it’s a bit of a shock to the system when you hang out with people who are neurotypical and they don’t have any idea about neurodivergence. And they don’t mean to say the wrong thing, but inadvertently they accidentally put their foot in it.

Well, we are going to finish up, Millie. It has been an absolute pleasure. If you’ve loved the episode, a great favour would be to give a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. So thank you so much for your time, Millie. I really appreciate it.

 

Millie Carr:

Thank you so much, Jen. I really enjoyed talking to you about these things.

 

Jane McFadden:

The key message here is you are not alone. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, follow us on Instagram or head over and join our amazing ADHD Mums Podcast Facebook community.

Everything you do matters and helps to spread the word about what neurodiversity in females looks like.

 

 

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