Yes, boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD because their symptoms of ADHD are more disruptive in the classroom and at home. Girls are under diagnosed because their symptoms are less disruptive and don’t catch any attention for others to seek further assessment.
I don’t doubt that ADHD is oftentimes under diagnosed in girls. Could it be that boys are much more likely to present with the hyperactive/impulsive type than the inattentive type? How do we know that boys who aren’t hyperactive don’t go similarly undiagnosed?
PS. Tell your berner my dog says hi. 
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It’s interesting because I remember few being diagnosed in the late 70/ 80s when I was a kid. I always say I’m undiagnosed.
One of my kids has “focus” issues. Half their friends are on pills.
Is the care / diagnosis better? Is it monetary for the companies?
Is it all real (I know it is) - or is Tom Cruise onto something - I don’t know.
Guess I’m wondering - is there over diagnosis? But there is so many things today they didn’t know about - chemical imbalances and the like, etc.
The discussion of ADHD and undiagnosed / misdiagnosed is not a trivial one. And one that deserves its own thread rather than being lost in the nether realms of this thread.
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This thread is one way to get the post count up during the summer. 
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My not-hyper son was not diagnosed for this reason, so no, it’s not just girls who are missed this way!
But early education requires sitting still, so kids who can’t do that are noticed. It also requires many of the skills girls develop earlier, so it can be frustrating for boys. It certainly makes it easier to understand the value proposition in single sex education.
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I wonder why male children in other countries do not seem to have this problem.
The education system was designed for hundreds of years to teach male children. Female children were added to the education system relatively recently. Apparently the system worked for most until quite recently.
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They do. It’s common around the world. The US is ranked average for the number of people with ADHD.
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Of course male children in other countries have this problem. Some are diagnosed appropriately- some are tracked early into vocational schools because “He’s not college material” (said at age 10).
And the system never worked for “most”. It’s just that in a post-industrial society, the costs of having adults who can’t read past a 5th grade level, or who can’t read a bar graph or pie chart, are enormous.
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I have two ADHD boys. Thing One was hyperactive and was diagnosed at a young age. Thing Two was not hyperactive, and his ADHD probably would have gone undetected if we hadn’t already been through the experience with his brother and known what to look for. My question about the gender breakdown of undiagnosed inattentive type ADHD was rhetorical. How can we know the gender breakdown of people who have never been diagnosed? There are a lot of 2e kids out there who are super intelligent and can compensate for their ADHD in an academic setting.
Edited to add: there may be data out there that shows the gender breakdown of people who are diagnosed with ADD as teens or adults. Maybe some of the experts out there could weigh in.
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I wasn’t clear enough. I understand the adhd diagnosis. Are boys in Japan or Russia or Brazil underperforming in school compared to their female schoolmates?
Or perhaps more relevant, what are German and Japanese schools doing right so they do not have the college attendance gap by gender that we have?
Yes, they are. I read an article recently on Sweden, where boys are 50% more likely to fail math, science and reading. The article also included that this is an issue in high income countries around the world.
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But not in Germany or Japan, where the numbers are very close to equal. So what accounts for the difference?
I don’t think it’s irrelevant to discuss the pervasiveness of ADHD in other countries, as it can add context to this conversation. But let’s avoid debate please.
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Will be interesting following this thread to see what the numbers are.
I’ve always felt that some boys are misdiagnosed because they dont fit neatly in some classroom situations and the teachers are not adequately trained to know how to manage those kids. Here is my experience.
Our S started 1st grade in public school and within a few months we are called in to a parent teacher conference on our son’s behavior. Seems he was constantly blurting out answers to questions without raising his hand or being called on. The teacher found this too disruptive without mentioning any attempts to redirect his energy. What they did suggest was that we take our S to a Dr so that he could be prescribed medication to “take the edge off of his behavior.” That day has now become known as the day that I asked our son to leave the the room so that I could, in no uncertain terms, tell the teacher and administrators to “pound sand”.
Soon after that day we enrolled our S in a wonderful private school after meeting with teachers and administrators that explained to us how they felt our S could have his energies directed in a positive way. We were excited. They met with our S and basically said “when we ask a question of the class, we know you already have the answer. Give the other kids a chance and if no one has the answer I’ll immediately ask you - that will be much cooler right?” It took a little while but it did work out. They also encouraged him to take up chess - a game where he would not automatically know the answer, but would have to think long and hard about individual moves and the implications that one move has on future moves. A few years later he was the grade level chess champion in our state.
He could have been placed on medication early on. No telling what would have become of him. Instead he graduated HS with 4.0 UW GPA, 2400 SAT (at the time 2400 was the max score), 4 perfect SAT Subject tests. Attended Stanford for BS/MS in CS and now living the dream of a single AI/ML engineer in a silicon valley start up.
I wonder what has become of others who might have deferred to the public school teacher?
He still plays the occasional chess game.
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I believe criteria for adhd diagnosis also differs between countries.
S25 was diagnosed with adhd as a 5 or 6yr old. The hyper impulsive type which I believe in many countries is just called hyperactivity disorder. Which actually makes more sense because it doesn’t have an attention component.
S25 was just a crazy boy that drove his teachers nuts with his energy. He matured and is neither hyper or impulsive. Exercise and more interesting schoolwork helped a lot. Not to say some/many kids have more serious adhd, they certainly do and need help. In S25’s case though, it was simply pathological boyhood.
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Very useful. And do they use more of those techniques, or other perhaps structural changes ( single sex? Different classrooms? Whatever) in places that achieve gender parity in tertiary education?
While I’m not sure that S25 is a Stanford bound genius, he too is very bright and used to blurt out the answers in class.
All of his “symptoms” improved when school got more interesting.
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I think there are fundamental issues with approaching ADHD. First of all, there is a huge range of kids with ADHD. Any generalizations are not good…
Second, just because someone is not NT it doesn’t necessarily you need to drug him/her. Maybe yes maybe no and it is very complicated since most drugs do not work forever and are not good for the liver etc. Some learn to compensate and some do not.
3rd -who said they are not teachable without drugs? Wrong! They are perfectly teachable but using absolutely different approaches.
If someone is different, it doesn’t mean he is not useful to society.
The biggest problem is our education system is not flexible enough. If your child is a real 2e with off-the-charts IQ good luck to find a suitable solution. No, they do not fit special education classes and no they are not slow! They are very fast in things that they are good and you will not be able to keep up…
Now think about all the wacky scientists and entrepreneurs who had some form of not being NT (starting from Einstein…)
Yes most of them can’t sit at the desk 8-5 and hardly can turn in homework in time, but they are not stupid and when they (if they can) find something that they are good at and passionate about they can be 100% more productive and useful for society than NT kids who get 4.0 GPA and can memorize facts from the books… ADHD kids are wired totally differently. They need new and exciting things all the time (their dopamine). NTs usually have no clue how ADHD kids think. Their life is not a picnic. They are socially awkward but very intelligent and absolutely do not fit into “normal” society often.
If these ADHD kids who generate amazing ideas but hardly can deliver them alone work in teams with NT people they can be absolutely amazing.
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