The day we brought her home from the hospital she wiggled and squirmed so much I could barely get a diaper on her. My mother told me I was in big trouble once those little legs learned how to run.
At 4 months, Sydney learned how to roll. One day I placed her on a blanket in the living room and left for a moment to warm a bottle. When I returned, she was gone. I turned to see my four month-old rolling herself down the hallway. It wasn’t long before she learned how to crawl and climb. And, my mother was right, I was in trouble.
When Sydney was six months old, she would no longer stay still for walks in a stroller. If I was worn out from chasing her, I would strap her in her stroller as tight as I could without hurting her, and try to walk for a while. But she couldn’t stand to sit still and she would wiggle out of her seat in minutes. My only break at times would be to put her in the bathtub where she would stay in one place for a half hour or more if I was lucky.
She learned to walk right after her first birthday and she learned to run that same afternoon. As she became a toddler, I noticed that she never played with anything for very long. Just a few minutes with anything and she was on to the next challenge.
At three, she could open the locked front door and be out the door and three houses down before I heard the door shut. I had to keep her with me at every moment. I took showers before she woke up, I brought her with me to the bathroom. Once, while home alone with her, I turned Barney on the television and attempted to take a quick shower. Five minutes later when I came down the stairs to check on her, dripping in my towel, I found she had managed to climb up onto the kitchen counter and find the pink cupcake sprinkles, which she was enjoying enormously.
People would tell me not to put breakables out of the way in the house, I should just be able to tell my daughter “no” and make her mind. But there was no type of punishment or reward that could stop her from doing something that she had decided to do. She was and is to this day, an extremely determined person who knows exactly what she wants to do and how she is going to get it done, no matter what.
When she started kindergarten, she still had not learned letters, even those in her own name, and it was not that I hadn’t tried many, many times. She was too busy to sit with paper and crayons. She would sit only for the shortest books, and only occasionally at that. The kindergarten teacher remarked that she had difficulty sitting in class. Sydney’s favorite activity during school was to be excused to the restroom so that she could run up and down the stalls, flushing toilets and listening to her voice echo. This earned her many notes home from the teacher and restrictions at home.
She cried the entire first month of first grade, because she wasn’t allowed to hum while she did her work, like she could in kindergarten. We laughed and thought it was cute, never realizing the real problem. We noticed that her reading was much behind that of the other kids in her class. Her writing also was much bigger and messier than the other kids’ writing. She could not count to 100, which it seemed the others in her class had mastered. She was obviously very smart from the beginning, which made it all very confusing. An extremely vocal and articulate child, we knew she had to be smart to be able to think up all of the mischief that she was constantly finding herself in.
In second grade, she began to mature somewhat and I was surprised when the teacher told me that she was sitting still in class and not in constant motion. This was followed by the news that she was having even more problems with her schoolwork. Her reading and writing were still lagging and she could not pass even the simplest spelling test to save her life. We would start on Monday for a Friday test and each day for a half hour, sometimes twice a day we would review her ten words. I researched on the Internet methods to teach spelling. I tried using color, having her write the words in shaving cream and in macaroni, spelling out loud and writing. She practiced words while walking in a circle around the kitchen table. Nothing worked. The teachers said that she was just “not a speller” and not to worry about it. I mentioned to teachers about the possibility of Sydney having ADHD, but they all thought I was crazy; Sydney could sit still in school, she was no longer a behavior problem.
Sydney struggled through third grade with the teacher constantly sending us notes home saying that she needed help with organization and focusing. I asked again about ADHD and was told that she “just needed to mature” and to wait until next year to see how she managed.
Fourth grade came along and the same problems were getting worse. Now Sydney was losing confidence in herself. It seemed as though no matter how much she studied or tried to pay attention, she could not succeed. I would ask her if she had done her homework or studied for her test and she would say, “Why? I’m going to fail anyway.” The simplest assignments took hours. I asked again at school about testing for ADHD, the teacher agreed to look into it but never did.
I mentioned all of these issues with our pediatrician who knew all too well how hyperactive Sydney could be in the office, but she did not offer any assistance or information regarding ADHD or possible learning disabilities. I talked to other parents and found a local doctor who specialized in ADHD and then called his office to ask how to get her tested. We were sent to a psychologist who tested her on two separate days. Finally, we received the diagnosis that I had suspected all along: Sydney had type III ADHD, which means that at times she is bouncy, hyperactive and talking a mile a minute, but at school she would be more day-dreamy, able to keep her body still while her mind continued to roam at a break-neck pace, leaving her unable to concentrate on her schoolwork.
Although we now had a diagnosis, I was strictly against medicating my child. I didn’t want to medicate my bouncy child with a bubbly, happy personality and risk changing her. I was against medication for many reasons; I had heard horrible statistics about Ritalin. I thought it was for children whose parents could not control them. When my children were little, I never gave them a pacifier for the same reason. I thought if a baby was crying, there must be a reason. Maybe she was hungry, bored, or uncomfortable. I wanted to take care of the problem, not just stick a pacifier in her mouth. That was how I felt about Ritalin: it was for kids whose parents weren’t willing to step up and control a difficult child or deal with an uneasy situation.
After the first week of fifth grade, however, we decided that we needed to do something drastic or I feared for Sydney’s future and her happiness. As she began the medication and gradually worked up to a full dose, we were amazed at the changes in her. She began to write very small and neat, her reading increased by two grade levels, and she was not only passing tests, she was getting A’s. We noticed changes socially also, she found a group of girls that she clicked with. She finished her fifth grade year with straight A’s and only one B. When my husband and I went to school for an open house and saw Sydney’s name on the President’s list on the wall for the first time in her life, we stood with tears in our eyes. Sydney was so proud and happy with herself. We took pictures of her standing in front of the honor roll list. I realize that if I had not pushed and insisted on her being tested, she could have easily fallen through the cracks. She was standing on the brink at the end of fourth grade.
I have learned that I was initially very wrong in my estimation of ADHD medications. The purpose of ADHD medicine is not for parents who cannot control their children, it is for children who are struggling and doing everything they can but simply cannot make themselves concentrate no matter how hard they try. ADHD children are lucky because their learning disability can be helped by medicine, and the quality of their lives can be greatly improved. It helps them not only to succeed, but also to thrive in school, sports and home. Sydney is still the very bouncy, energetic and happy person she has always been, but she no longer comes home after school and cries that she is the “dumbest kid in the class”. I wish I had gotten Sydney diagnosed earlier and saved her some of the heartache she went through. The medication has been a godsend for us.
Years later, Sydney still mentions the fact that she couldn’t hum while she was working in first grade and how it affected her. Now that she is older, she explains that humming helped her tune out all the other noise in the classroom so that she could concentrate on her work. When she couldn’t hum, she felt like she wasn’t smart and she felt hopeless.
Sydney wants to be an elementary school teacher when she grows up. She wants to be able to teach kids like herself with attention problems. She had the opportunity in fifth grade to be a “peer helper” for a kindergartner with attention problems. She thought of new ways to teach him his spelling words, always with spelling and some type of movement at the same time. She did so well that she was given another child. She soon had five children whom she taught spelling words and math problems.
She knows that she will be a great teacher because of all that she has been through. I know that she will be a great teacher because of her endless energy and her ability to do five things at once, not to mention her sweet, loving nature. And… she will make sure that her pupils will be able to hum while they work.
Girls can be especially difficult to diagnose with ADHD because many times girls with the disorder are the inattentive type and do not appear outwardly hyperactive, especially at school. Parents need to be vigilant if they believe their daughter is ADHD. You may need to do a great deal of research on your own and you may not get much support from the school system or even the pediatrician. You will need to trust your instincts when it comes to your child.
The National Center for Girls &Women with AD/HD was founded in 1997 to study the unique characteristics of females with the disorder (www.ncgiadd.org). The two founding authorities, Patricia Quinn, M.D., and Kathleen Nadeau, Ph.D. believe that the disorder may occur as often in girls as it does in boys, but is diagnosed much less often due in part to a lack of training for both medical practitioners and teachers. If you believe your daughter is ADHD, a great place to start is www.addvance.com, which has checklists and characteristics specific to girls and women.

To update this article: Sydney is now in sixth grade. Just recently she was called out of class and interviewed by three teachers. They asked her questions about her goals, her feelings about school, and her hopes for the future. Of course, she told them that she hopes to be a teacher one day, and also how much she values her education. She was then told that she was being interviewed for the “advanced” classes. Sydney came home from school that day and told me, “Mom, you just can’t understand after all that I have been through to even be considered for advanced classes is such an honor.” Sydney is now three inches taller than I am. I know that she will make it into the advanced the classes, but more important, I know that she will succeed in life. And that is all a mother can hope for.