Transcript
Phil: So the the inattentive ADHD child would be more the wallflower.?
Merriam: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. They don’t have the hyperactive piece or they don’t have, the impulse control piece. So they tend not to be children that act out. They are the children that will, seem to be daydreaming in class, will forget things at home a lot or forget where they put things. But because they’re not acting out, they’re not troublemakers. They often don’t get, you know, they’re not the squeaky wheel. So they often don’t get the grease until, you know, grades really start deteriorating. Maybe this is the trial that’s not learning to read as quickly or you know, doesn’t turn homework in all the time. And so grades start getting impacted.
Phil: Yes. So that’s when it gets noticed it, there’s no other real common indicators that people would notice?
Merriam: No, because there aren’t typically the behavior issues. Right. So, you know, and there isn’t really homework. Well, there shouldn’t be anyway in kindergarten, first grade, second grade when we are to, expect higher reasoning when you start to read, to learn instead of learning to read in third grade. you know, that might be when, oh, what’s going on with this child? Starts to become a little more noticeable. Percentage wise also ADHD. Inattentive type tends to be diagnosed more in girls, of course, it’s not exclusive.
Phil: So actually that leads me something. I just recently we have an online, dyslexia screener and I took the data from that screener and just did a really deep dive into that data. I found quite a few interesting things, but one of the interesting things that just was really baffling to me was that I found that these are parents taking the screener for the child and, just filling in. And I found that the boys that the screener is being taken for the median age. That was between five and seven. Maybe five and five and eight. The girls was between 14 and 16. Wow. These are girls that are having problems in reading. So whether its dyslexia or possibly the innattentive adhd, I don’t know if there’s a relationship here. but that just really, that stands out to me that this inattentive ADHD would not get noticed.
Merriam: Yeah, that’s interesting. I mean, I, I’m not all that surprised. I think because girls have a tendency to be, you know, I hate to stereotype across the board, but, right. It’s just frequently girls might have a tendency to be more people pleasers , and we’ll just push through and try to go unnoticed and just do what they have to do. And there could be a correlation.
Phil: Yeah. Yeah. That’s , I mean, everybody I’ve spoken to has had the same thing that girls typically have a higher on the agreeableness scale. And so therefore would go and then, you know, they, they use, I’ve, I’ve had girls in my class then the way they’ll avoid things is being cute, you know, and, and it works. It worked, you know, and so, they can divert your attention from, from problems in a way that, their, they can be pretty skilled at it actually.
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