Find the ADHD Girls with Cynthia Hammer

This week I’m joined again by Cynthia Hammer, founder of ADD Resources, the Inattentive ADHD Coalition, and more recently, FINDtheADHDgirls. Cynthia’s been a driving force in ADHD advocacy since the 90s and continues to be one of the loudest and clearest voices calling for earlier, more accurate diagnoses—especially for girls.

In our chat, we talked about how inattentive ADHD often slips through the cracks, especially in school settings, and how often many of us end up masking so well that even parents and teachers miss the signs. And since inattentive ADHD is predominantly seen in women, this is just another one of those issues that has driven so many women to go undiagnosed.

Cynthia walks us through the new ADHD screening checklist she developed, the importance of identifying co-occurring conditions, and how things like sleep, histamine intolerance, and even stretchy joints can intersect with ADHD in ways that aren’t always obvious.

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William Curb: All right, well, Cynthia it's great to have you back on the podcast. Last time we talked about your book, the living with inattentive ADHD, climbing the circular staircase of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Whenever I like expand ADHD out into its full name, I'm like, wow, that is a really long name to say all at once. And it was great to have you back on the podcast.

Cynthia Hammer: Well, actually, I was thinking the other day, I reread an article I wrote about how it's a terrible name for our condition. And I was just saying how why couldn't we make up a name? It could just be called ADHD and we never say what it means.

William Curb: That works for me. Nice and short, we know exactly what we're talking about.

Cynthia Hammer: Who's a Dave Pilke calls it ADHD.

William Curb: Oh, yeah. Yeah. My kids definitely enjoyed those dogman books, speaking of the kids.

Cynthia Hammer: I'll catch you up on what I've been doing since we last talked. So my book came out and I had thought it would sell millions and now I'm happy at selling thousands. And also I had it made into an audio book. So that's available if people prefer that. And I guess as a special incentive for people to come to the website we created now for find the ADHD girls, they can look under resources and I have a link there that they could get that audio book for free.

William Curb: Oh, awesome. Yeah. I personally do a lot of books for audio books. I can go out on a walk and I also tend to speed them up.

Cynthia Hammer: I've heard that.

William Curb: I know some people don't like to do that. And for me, I'm just like, oh, I focus better when it's a little bit faster. I can't try and get other thoughts in between the words.

Cynthia Hammer: Right. Well, so even though I read that I should keep promoting my book, of course, with ADD, my interest has moved on. And after I interviewed 25 women that had combined type ADD, I realized it's not only the inattentive type that goes on diagnosed. Maybe that's true with men and women, but with women, they get misdiagnosed, whether they have the inattentive type or the combined type.

So we started a new project under the inattentive ADHD coalition and it's called 'Find the ADHD Girls'. And our mission there is to get girls diagnosed before age eight. Boys with ADHD are diagnosed on average by age seven. And when we talk to clinicians, they say they're comfortable diagnosing children by age seven. So we want girls to get diagnosed by age eight.

William Curb: And it's one of those things where it seems like the lag time between knowing that women are under-diagnosed and getting the action for it happening has been taking longer than we'd expected. So I love this project because it is something that needs to happen because I have met many of my daughter's classmates and I went, oh, maybe I should have a little talk with your parents because you should know you should keep an eye out for some of these things.

Cynthia Hammer: Yeah. Well, and if you're thinking that now we're saying it's 10 to 11 percent of children have ADHD and if half of those should be girls, it means in a class of 30, let's see. You'd have three children that should have ADHD and half of those, one or two of them should be girls. At least we think that there are, it's an equal opportunity diagnosis. So we think we don't have the research, but we think boys and girls have it in equal amounts, although boys have been diagnosed three times more often than the girls. So there's a big backlog there of women now that never got diagnosed. And we don't want that to continue to happen. We want them to get diagnosed early the same way other children are getting diagnosed early.

William Curb: Yeah. And the advantages of having that early diagnosis are so clear because most of the people that listen to this podcast are late diagnosed, but do have, I know we have a lot of parents and caregivers and stuff as well that are listening, but it's everyone that I've talked to that's had this late diagnosis is just they're like, I wish I had known because there's so much negative self-talk that goes along with not having that diagnosis and just thinking you're not as good as everyone else.

Cynthia Hammer: Right. The part two, I mean, a lot of it is tied into the inattentive ADHD, which is more common in girls is because the public has such a concept of the hyperactive, physically hyperactive child that until we educate about the inattentive type, it's going, it's still harder. I mean, even people, parents who got one child diagnosed and didn't get the other because they didn't know about the two types. It's a lack of knowledge. Not, you know, people would be willing to diagnose, but they lack the information.

William Curb: Yeah, absolutely. Because it is such a thing where most of our knowledge from about what ADHD is comes from pop culture, which I mean, inattentive ADHD is not. I can think of a few characters that might that I would qualify as having an inattentive ADHD, but never like explicitly said to have ADHD.

Cynthia Hammer: Well, I don't think is that they went out as exciting or as dynamic. I actually had tried to find Dave Pilkey's address and I sent him a letter on Bainbridge Island saying how he could do a favor to the ADHD world if he created a female character who had the inattentive type. But I was trying to figure out how could she be a good character in a book? You know, what would she be doing? She'd be having maybe visions or dreams or I don't know, can you create a good character that's inattentive?

William Curb: I feel like you could because you could definitely have all the very classic inattentive things, you know, like staring out the window, you know, losing your stuff all the time, you know, like having the character be like, oh, they always show up, but they always have the wrong stuff with them because they forgot what they were supposed to bring.

Cynthia Hammer: But then they do something magical or amazing in spite of your low expectations.

William Curb: Yeah, well, I mean, that is something that I feel a lot of us were like, yeah, I brought the wrong stuff, but I still figured it out because that's what I had to do it so often. I know what to do when I'm out of sorts.

Cynthia Hammer: Well, I love what someone said. They think our creativity is partially based on the fact that we forget how we did it the last time. So we have to figure out a new way to do it.

William Curb: Never the same way twice.

Cynthia Hammer: Yes.

William Curb: So what is the method that you're using to try and drive this?

Cynthia Hammer: So first, I created a checklist and it's based on the DSM-5 and the Diva-5, which are validated things, but I asked AI to simplify the language. So it's in a much more digestible, understandable. I always found the DSM criteria difficult to fathom. So this breaks it down and describes actual behaviors. And then we had three psychologists, including Kathleen Nadeau and two physicians who only treat ADHD, give us more input. And they added sections to cover anxiety and depression and emotional regulation. And the whole questionnaire is based on the kinds of things that would be seen in a seven-year-old girl.

So we encourage people to go to the website, is just find the ADHDgirls.org and fill out the checklist. It's a screening tool. It's not diagnostic, but it's a screening tool. And if your child has a lot of check marks, you should take the completed form to your physician and talk with him about your concerns. The other thing we've done with the website is we have a lot of articles. Weekly, we add more articles talking about the different aspects of helping a young girl who's just been diagnosed with ADHD. And beyond that, we have interviews.

They're on our YouTube channel. Kathleen Ellison, who's a good surprise-winning journalist, she has ADHD, but she's doing our interviews for us. And we're interviewing professionals, finding out what they advise for these young girls. And also parents, what they've done to help their young girls. Beyond that, we have a program.

It's by invitation only. But we are inviting women of influence in the ADHD field to become committed partners. And by becoming a committed partner, they've agreed every quarter they're going to do something to share this kind of information about ADHD in young girls with their followers. And in turn, they're asking their followers to share that information and them to share that information. So it's like a chain letter that we're trying to disperse throughout the social media world this information about young girls needing to get diagnosed early.

William Curb: I mean, and that's such an important factor to like, yeah, people don't know what they don't know. And so getting these kinds of checklists where they can find this information out.

Cynthia Hammer: Actually, I could give you the PDF to, it's all in the public domain. Everything we're going to produce will be in the public domain. Dr. Darrell Bock Well, that's very cool. Kathleen Ellison And so I can give you the PDF and you can, you know, if you have a place so your listeners could go find that. We prefer they come to the website and fill it out the form online because it's actually research based.

And we already have 300 responses that help us to know which issues are the most predominant ones. We find out that a lot of girls, then parents are saying they also bite their fingernails. Now that's something we wouldn't have known, you know. So if they filled out the form on our website, they would automatically be subscribed to our newsletter and they would be helping us with our research because the online form collects all the data.

William Curb: Yeah. I mean, that's great to be able to like find those patterns that we normally wouldn't see because ADHD very rarely just comes as the only thing that you're dealing with. Kathleen Ellison Yes, right. Dr. Darrell Bock It's very important to see like, okay, well, what else do we need to watch out for? Because maybe one of those things where, yeah, if I know this one thing, I can find this next thing. And then I mean, and as a parent, I know how much I want to be able to support my kids in the best way that I can. And to do that, I'd need to know what's going on.

Cynthia Hammer: Yeah. So the other thing that we're learning, and I personally have this experience of I had allergies and I went to allergy shots and then I learned I have histamine intolerance. And now I'm learning that people with ADD are often deficient in the DAO enzyme, which is what breaks down your histamine when you eat foods that are high in histamine. We're learning a lot more about some of the physical problems that are more likely to be had in people with ADHD. Have you talked with anyone about that?

William Curb: I have not. It's on my list because I really wanted to get into like the hyper mobility aspects that I've been learning about, especially because they affect me. And I've dislocated my shoulder so many times now, just from doing things where I'm not like be going into extreme range of emotions or something. And it's just like, pop, and I'm like, that's not good.

Cynthia Hammer: You might look it up and I'm not sure I have the name right, but I think it's called the A.L.A. or Danlo symptom or it's loose joints.

William Curb: Yeah. A.L.A. or Danlo

Cynthia Hammer: And I always thought I was something special that I could reach behind my back and reach way up to the back of my neck, that I had very flexible shoulder. Apparently, if it's bad enough, it causes people harm and injuries like you experienced.

William Curb: Yeah. One of my wife's best friends has A.L.A. downloads and they will dislocate their fingers and their sleep, which is very unpleasant.

Cynthia Hammer: But the histamine, I think, is an issue for people with ADD and it might contribute to their sleep problems. Because if I eat some foods high in histamine, it's harder for me to sleep or harder me to get into deep sleep.

William Curb: Yeah. And then we already have so many issues with sleep on top of that from with how the changes in our circadian rhythm and all that, it's, we don't need to be adding on more things. And I know for me personally, my symptoms are so much worse when I have bad sleep and when my kids have bad sleep, their symptoms are so much worse.

Cynthia Hammer: Yeah. One thing I wanted to go back and talk about, find the ADHD girls is what we're creating a lot of content. Every month we create two handouts and they'll be available so that professionals could download those, put their own label on it and distribute it. Because I know Sun Nines parents say, I go to the doctor and they just give pills, they don't give us any information.

Well, we're creating the handouts that doctors or therapists could use to give to their patients. They'll be a part of our website. We're creating it now called the repository. And all the things that we create, all the content we create will be in the public domain. And it's all things people could download and share, use however they want, put it in a newsletter. So I wanted to get that information out there.

William Curb: Yeah. Having those resources available is very important because it's, again, people learn, we learn mostly through pop culture, which we know is wrong. And then, but having easy access to resources that are accurate and giving the information you need is so important now.

Cynthia Hammer: Right. So do you have any children that are girls with ADHD?

William Curb: I do.

Cynthia Hammer: And what age were they diagnosed?

William Curb: She was under seven, maybe when she was six.

Cynthia Hammer: Was it before or after your diagnosis?

William Curb: After my diagnosis.

Cynthia Hammer: And so that put you on the alert or how did it come about that she got diagnosed?

William Curb: Well, yeah, I was on alert because I was already writing this podcast. I knew girls were under diagnosed and so it was something that I was watching for specifically. And we talked with some of her teachers and they're like, oh, that's just how kids are and stuff. And I was like, maybe at school because she's very good at being very academically gifted. And so it's very good at school, really wants to please teachers and stuff. And so...

Cynthia Hammer: They weren't seeing it.

William Curb: Yeah. And so, but that was then leading because she's being so active at school with trying to be the best student. It was like the crash coming home when, you know, left. And it's just like, okay, we so looking at that, and then especially like during the summer seeing how she it's also been great getting to diagnosis early for her and being able to like educate her about ADHD because she doesn't view it as like a bad thing in any way right now. She's just like, oh, yeah, my brain works differently.

I have to do these things. And it's also like super helpful as a parent to just be like, oh, there's certain things I can't ask of you because developmentally that isn't someplace you're at right now. Like if I'm sending kids up to their room to get something, I really have to make sure that I know that they're going to have so much trouble getting that thing and coming back downstairs without getting distracted in the middle. Because that is something that's just so hard to do when you're, you know, a little kid and you have ADHD.

Cynthia Hammer: Right. So did you have trouble getting the physician to accept the diagnosis when the school was saying they didn't see the problem?

William Curb: Well, we had them fill out like we got all the forms and stuff. They filled it like, yep, these are, you know, how they display at school. And the physician is like, yeah, that's enough. And we had a fantastic pediatrician that was on board with everything and...

Cynthia Hammer: That's good because I've also had a woman write me. She said, my daughter masks so well. And I think when your daughter is all into pleasing adults, that's a kind of masking, you know, that they're afraid to let people know where they're struggling. She said she masks so well that no one, no one sees her troubles. And so that's an issue that makes it harder sometimes to diagnose the girls because they're masking and there's a stress on them to mask, but it makes it harder for people to observe their symptoms.

William Curb: Yeah. What was really hard is we tried to, can't remember, IEP or 504, one of them, dealing with the school and trying to take off some of these burdens of masking for our daughter and be like, oh, can she have help with these certain things and these kinds of things? And in the school's vision, they're like, no, the masking is a great thing. They should keep doing that. And I'm like, I understand you don't want to put things into place so that you don't have to, but like masking is not the answer for helping people with ADHD.

Cynthia Hammer: Right. It's good that you know that. And I just think that that early understanding for you to understand, for parents to understand and for the girl herself to understand. And that's when we're saying is that the neuro-plasticity is there when they're young too. So that if you can raise them, learning these new skills and practicing these new behaviors, it's an easier time in their life to incorporate that new learning. When you're an adult, it's harder. Your brain doesn't want to learn new things as easily.

William Curb: Yeah, and we're calling a study, I probably didn't read it as in-depth as I should have now that I'm thinking about it, but it did have suggestions that medication for children can have that, really have that effect where it lowers their need for medication later in life because of that neuro-plasticity and them being able to build up-

Cynthia Hammer: Change the brain. There was a scary thing that came out at a time, it's saying that Ritland changes your brain. And that made people apprehensive, but I was saying, yes, yes, that's what you want it to do. You want it to change some of the pathways in your brain. So things that were more difficult for you are now easier for you to do because you've strengthened the connections.

William Curb: Yeah, and it's one of the things where it's like, oh yeah, it totally makes sense. Executive function is a skill and to learn that skill, we need to be able to concentrate and medication can make that easier to learn that skill and build up that internal logic that supports it.

Cynthia Hammer: That's our philosophy. We were the Inattentive ADHD Coalition and the Find the ADHD Girls. We believe that medication is the most effective treatment for ADHD. We believe that when one person in a family is diagnosed, everyone in the family should be screened. Yeah. And we believe, of course, in early diagnosis and treatment.

William Curb: I love that addition of also having the parents screened too, because...

Cynthia Hammer: It's genetic, baby. It's genetic.

William Curb: I went to a family reunion a couple of years ago, and I was like, oh, oh, I see.

Cynthia Hammer: Well, that happens, I think, when you first diagnosed it. You go around and seeing it everywhere. And I had family members that would roll their eyes when I'd say, so and so has ADHD. And then I'd have to say what their telltale signs were that I could diagnose them with ADHD.

William Curb: Yeah. Since I'd been reading the podcast for a while too, I had a bunch of the other parents come by and be like, hey, so, I heard you'd know a lot about ADHD. Give me some resources for my kids. And I'm like, yeah, I know some great podcasts. And I mean, you can listen to mine, not focused on kids, but...

Cynthia Hammer: Oh, oh, oh. So people were recognizing you not because of your behaviors, but because they had heard you're famous.

William Curb: In family famous.

Cynthia Hammer: Oh, I see. Well, I, and I don't know if this applies as much to children with ADHD as autism, but someone tongue in cheek wrote, I don't know why diagnosis is such a complicated process because my classmates can identify me in 15 minutes.

William Curb: Yeah. They don't identify it as ADHD or autism, but they do identify that.

Cynthia Hammer: Yes. Right. Right. And so that's with the girls, that's where they really struggle is with the social connections, I think more than the boys, because the boys behavior is more acceptable. And boys will be boys kind of thing. But girls, there's just certain ways we're expected to act. Certain social skills were expected naturally to inculcate. And when we don't, we feel different. And we're outliers. We don't know why. And so getting the understanding why and finding others who, who are like you.

I mean, that is a key thing, I think is always finding your, your tribe, the people where you don't feel like you have to mask. You can be who you are. I went to the first conference for adults with ADHD and it was such a joyful experience because we could openly say and laugh about our stories of having lost our way back to our room or losing the keys or, you know, the typical things that we try to mask when we're around people that don't or judge ADHD. So that's what the ADHD conference often is for is for that release of tension.

William Curb: Yeah. So nice little reprieve of like, oh yeah, no one is going to judge any of my ADHD conditions here.

Cynthia Hammer: Yes.

William Curb: I would love to jump back on this idea that you're just talking about how girls don't, they're, so they're not presenting the same and they're having some of these more unique challenges. And do you think you could speak a little bit more on some of the unique challenges girls face in the school system or just women in general face with ADHD?

Cynthia Hammer: What Dr. Orrin Mason said at first is that teachers at the start of the year, they'll kind of identify the children in the classroom that might need help. Now maybe this is true for the combined type. What generally happens is children with ADHD look really good at the start of the school year because things are new and interesting. And it's not until a little bit later that maybe the dreamy, the girl that's not completing, turning in her homework, who forgets to do the backside of the paper, who is disorganized, she's asking a fellow student, what page are we on? She doesn't know the place.

If she's called on, she's not sure what the teacher just said. Instead of one or two predominant things like with the boy, he's physically active, he's disruptive, he's talking out in class, very in-your-face kind of symptoms, the girl, it's more subtle. And the teacher has to be alert that it's not just one behavior that's a telltale, it's this complex of behaviors. And that's where the checklist helps because it makes you aware of the variety of behaviors. But when they're all pulled together, it's a high indicator of the ADHD in girls.

Now for the girls that have the combined type, they often suppress their physical hyperactivity, or they try to express it in more socially acceptable ways. So they would tell me that I would find ways to get out of my seat that were not obtrusive. It's not like the teacher would say, you're out of your seat, go sit down again. They would get up to sharpen in the pencil, or they would raise their hand and have to go out of the classroom to go to the bathroom, or they would be trying to be teacher's helper where they could get up and pass things around the classroom.

So they intuitively knew they needed, they were restless and they needed to be active, but they were trying to learn to do it in waves again, where they were masking that they wanted to do it in really socially acceptable ways. One woman told me that to suppress herself, she was biting the inside of her cheek, causing herself a little bit of pain to remind herself, stay in your seat, keep quiet, hold yourself in. So girls, I think, put themselves under more stress for meeting socially accepted standards than the boys would.

William Curb: Yeah, I can totally agree with that, where I was going back to my old childhood and going, oh, I did a bunch of that stuff.

Cynthia Hammer: Yeah, so you're an inattentive type, so you had suffered some of the same things that the girls do.

William Curb: Yeah, well, so I'm combined type, but I did do the...

Cynthia Hammer: Yes, yes.

William Curb: Like, I need to go to the bathroom, and I would go to the bathroom, but then I'd walk up and down the hall for a bit and move around a bunch and then come back. I hadn't thought about that in a long time, and I was like, oh, yeah, I totally did a bunch of the stuff where... At the time, I didn't know why I was doing it, but retrospectively, oh, that is very obvious why.

Cynthia Hammer: When I asked Dr. Farone which form of ADHD the people suffered the more, he said the combined type because they had more symptoms. But I feel like the in a tent of type suffers a lot because of their internal talk. I think they're more shy, they're more anxious, they're more withdrawn, whereas the combined type, they're more out there. Maybe they get rejection, but they're more flamboyant, I would think, in their personalities. You get this feeling that they're less aware or, I don't know how it is for them, so maybe I shouldn't speak to that, but I know how it is for me.

William Curb: Yeah, well, and I think there's advantages, disadvantages, like yes, you get the, for the more hyperactive, impulsive sides of things, yes, you get more reprimands, but you are doing more stuff with the inattentive type, you're getting a lot less support because people aren't seeing your internal struggle. They're not seeing that like, I'm just like, oh, yeah, she's just not doing the things because I think the inattentive type gets a lot more of the, they're lazy or they're not reaching their potential. And the impulsive is like, oh, they just need to redirect their energy and they need to, they're both not great, but it is something where it's really easy to overlook what's going on with the inattentive type and kind of dismiss it because they're not causing the big problems in the classroom, they're not making a scene.

Cynthia Hammer: Yeah, and maybe there's a couple other simpler ways to start looking, finding the children with ADHD is Dr. Hallowell says underachievement that doesn't reflect the aptitude, you know, the child that you think should be doing much better than they are, but they have the under achievement that can also be an indicator of ADHD or the in England, this guy said that they're going to try to start teaching teachers about the bell curve and to recognize the children that are on the end of the bell curve. The ones that are, you know, just in different measurements, they're not in the middle with everyone else. And that that could be a way to just start saying these children are off the bell curve, you know, they're not paying attention like other children in the class, they're not having the friendships like other children in the class, you know, different measures that would make you think they're developing normally.

William Curb: It's one of those things where having looking back on my childhood being like, seeing like, okay, those were the weird kids and being like, oh, no, that was just, they were being themselves.

Cynthia Hammer: The other day, this woman said to me that our society has one way you're supposed to be. And if you're not that way, they say you have a disability. Mm hmm. So I thought that was really good, you know, you have the in crowd and the out crowd.

William Curb: Yeah, definitely. One of the things I feel like I've learned from doing this podcast is that if you're struggling with something or someone else is struggling with something, there is a reason behind it. It is not just they are bad, right? You are bad. There's some underlying thing that is causing the struggle. And if we can identify what that struggle is, it makes so much easier to get past the struggle because you're like, oh, I can do things specifically for this now. I don't just have to try harder or just give up because I don't know what's going on.

Cynthia Hammer: Right, right. Yeah. So I guess that's not a new way of thinking, but just thinking that no child wants to misbehave. There's a reason behind the misbehavior, you know?

William Curb: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Cynthia Hammer: And that's what you should be looking for.

William Curb: Yeah. Trying to, like, as I said, like my daughter really likes to please people. And I'm like, when she's not doing that and she's struggling with getting something done, there is a reason behind it. And if I try to identify that, then I'm going to have, like, maybe she got really bad sleep or, you know, she's dealing with these histamine issues or, you know, something along the line and being like, okay, if I can address what's going on.

Cynthia Hammer: Yeah, she doesn't want to be making me upset.

William Curb: Yeah. Like, I mean, I think there are times that she definitely wants to be making her brother upset, but that's that sibling stuff that's different. But for parents and like, yeah, kids, kids want kids are so desperate for approval and wanting to please. And when they're misbehaving, it's like, okay, there's something else going on here. Let's try and figure out this. Why, if I can approach these with like, oh, what, what's going on here? Being overly critical and judgmental won't help solve this problem. I have to be a collaborator with my kid to both that their needs are being met and whatever I want is being met as well.

Cynthia Hammer: How old is your daughter now?

William Curb: She will be 10 next month. And her brother will be eight this year. So, yeah, he was, it is very funny because it was for diagnosis was like, oh, yeah, it's like very, for me, it was very obvious that my daughter had ADHD. But, you know, it was the combined type and but leaning more towards the inattentive. My son was definitely on the leaning towards hyperactive impulsive. So, it was just so much more obvious from the outside. And I'm like, this is the exact reason that more boys get diagnosed and girls because it was like, oh, yeah, she has ADHD. And then my son came her along and was like, holy guacamole, that's ADHD.

Cynthia Hammer: Yeah, yeah, it's like two different settings on the dial. They both could have what's called the combined type. They both have the same type, but it depends what predominates. And so, one psychiatrist said that after reading my book, he didn't think I had the inattentive type. And I disagreed. I said, to me, it's more how I come across. You know, if I meet someone who's, but I think of his combined type, they're high energy. They are full of, they can do without a little sleep. They have lots of ideas. I say, I can be that way for a short period of time, but I could not maintain it all day long. You know, but I think of the hyperactive impulsive, even though maybe we're both combined, I'm more towards the inattentive characteristics.

William Curb: Yeah. And I think there's also this difference when we're older. And even though I might appear more inattentive now, I do have a lot more restless thoughts. Instead of impulsively running out into the street or something, I'm maybe doing impulsive shopping or opening 15 YouTube videos when I should be doing something else. And I'm like, oh, these are all impulsive things, but they're not, because they're not high energy impulsive things, they don't feel like they're impulsive things.

Cynthia Hammer: Ah, that's true. So sometimes when I was supposed to be doing something and I'm going down a rabbit hole instead, I just tell myself that I know I'm doing this and I'm going to get back to what I'm supposed to be doing when I'm done doing this. You know, so I give myself to follow that impulse because I'm saying myself, if I don't do it now, I'm going to forget. And I really need to know about this. So I give myself permission to go off track.

William Curb: Yeah. I mean, because that's, I think a great strategy because I know so often when I am feeling distracted, trying to force myself to just like, no, just buckle down, do what you're supposed to do. I'm like, that doesn't usually work. That's just me being like, and sometimes I, all I need to do is like, make myself know like, hey, look up this idea that you had like, who was the actor in that movie?

Cynthia Hammer: Well, that works and it doesn't because I write a note and I think, well, I'll understand that when I look at it. And later I look at it and I have no idea what the note was about.

William Curb: Yeah.

Cynthia Hammer: Or because I have poor handwriting, I'll try to do something with a code and I'll create a code and say, well, I'll remember that code means this person was on LinkedIn.

William Curb: Yeah, it's always fun finding those like, I'm like, what was the sticky note about?

Cynthia Hammer: Yeah.

William Curb: Or I just have like a phone number on it. And I'm like, why did I just write down a phone number and like stick this to my monitor six months ago?

Cynthia Hammer: I have some names I've written down and now I'm doing Google searches on them to find out hopefully why I had written their name down.

William Curb: It's always funny to find those. All right. I was wondering if there were any final thoughts that you wanted to leave the audience with?

Cynthia Hammer: Well, I guess if any of you out there are concerned about giving girls with ADHD a fair start in life, there's some simple things you can do to help spread our message. If we're out on social media, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, if you started to follow our posts, if you commented on them, if you reposted it, that is going to increase our audience size because the more popular our posts are, the more the algorithm thinks, oh, other people will want to see this. So they share it. And the other thing is, if, as I said, we're creating a lot of content that's in the public domain.

So if you're putting out a newsletter, if you are putting out anything on the internet that you need content for, come check us out because we're happy to share what we've created. It's very good. It's reliable, well researched information that we provide. And so, William's going to be able to make the checklist available for you. Remember, you can go to the website and you can get my audiobook for free. That's a little inside tip there.

William Curb: All right. I'll conclude links to all of that. And so the website is findtheadhdcurls.org. What social media platforms should people look for you on?

Cynthia Hammer: Well, we're on LinkedIn. We're on YouTube. We're on Instagram and Facebook.

William Curb: Awesome. Well, I hope I can send a lot of people your way because I think this is a great thing because it's so important for everyone to get diagnosed early and especially right now with girls who are just not getting that same attention.

Cynthia Hammer: Yep. Thank you, William. Thank you for your help with this.

William Curb: Thank you.

This Episode’s Top Tips

1. Not all hyperactivity is easy to spot. When dealing with combined type, many suppress hyperactivity and find subtle, socially acceptable ways to move around (like volunteering to hand out papers or making frequent trips to sharpen pencils) as a form of masked hyperactivity.

2. Masking can often lead to delayed or missed diagnosis, especially for those who are people pleasers or academically high-performing. When a child seems fine at school but crashes emotionally at home, that’s a sign they may be overcompensating or masking symptoms all day.

3. Early intervention helps build long-term executive function. Treating ADHD early isn’t just about managing symptoms in the moment; it's about teaching skills like organization, regulation, and focus while the brain is most plastic and ready to learn.