Can you have heavy ADHD signs as a kid, but not actually have ADHD?

[Thunk]

If anybody reads this, i would love to get your insight (:

I am not diagnosed with ADHD and I feel like I just want to justify what I experienced as a child, by telling myself I could have (had) it. But now as an adult I dont experience any ADHD signs..

So as a kid I was extremely forgetful, like I was a complete mess. I went on the last day of the school year to pick up my grades and came home emptyhanded, just to later find my papers lying on the paperbin outside the building. Another time we had a "bike license exam" in school and I had to bring my flashlights with me. Somehow I lost them and my mom helped me find them. We found the first front flash light and as we are about to find the second one, I already lost the first one again. I forgot to bring my flute to flute lessons, I forgot every possible due date we had in school or elsewhere. I daydreamed so much I didnt notice anything around me (yes I bumped into things a lot). People had trouble following my conversation because i would be all over the place. When I was eating, I could eat for entire 2 hours because I was making up a plot in my mind or because the cartoons on TV soaked all my attention. I literally sat there with a full spoon in my mouth and just forgot to swallow. I was so clumsy many times the food landed on the floor. Now my mum and I can joke about this, but she told me she had never seen a child so forgetful as me. I was interested in everything and my point of interest consumed me so much I could talk a month only about this one topic.

Because I had trouble fitting in and I didnt have a good relationship with my parents back then, I developed undiagnosed depression early on and soon after that an eating disorder (that again consumed all my attention). Being an immigrant didn't help with fitting in either (due to cultural differences). I was so unhappy, that one day I decided I'm just gonna fit in now! I studied the behaviour of others closely over the years and learned how to act socially acceptable. I still felt like an outcast but a little less a weirdo.

Now I am in my 20ies, I went to therapy for depression/burnout and my eating disorder. And now somehow ADHD is popping up all around me. And as a kid I can relate so much, but now, I dont have any problem navigating my attention at all. I am better at following a conversation than most of my peers. I actually feel overwhelmed by multitasking and too much stimulation. I like quiet times and if somebody is as jumpy in conversation as I would have been I am ususally the one bringing back their attention to the main topic. I am rarely fidgetty, only when I am very nervous.

Soo... I am kinda confused on where I stand and if ADHD signs can be very prevalant as a child but disappear as an adult. Or if I got so good at masking that I cannot relate to ADHD anymore. Does anybody have answers to this?

[Gettingittogether]

There is no precise answer to your specific question. I will say that anxiety and fear and distraction itself can interere with concentration and memory. If you were an anxious kid, anxiouness can disrupt working memory and lead to all kinds of problems.

Now there are the anxious people who over-prepare and over-check things, but that doesn't sound like you.

So here's the question. Why does this question bout your childhood matter to you? Are you trying to get diagnosed now or not?

[MTA-]

It took me a very long time to get diagnosed. And before I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Every time I told a doctor that I thought I had ADHD, they would say that anxiety causes ADHD-like symptoms.

Anxiety is worry; worry about the future. So, your mind is in the future, not the present. I've seen it happen in real time - someone who, the more anxious they got, the less they could focus or remember.

Of course, I do have ADHD, and my anxiety is controlled to the extent where it's a non-issue. So, I know it's ADHD that I have. But with the issues you experienced growing up, anxiety causing ADHD-like symptoms sounds like what you experienced.

The big clue is that ADHD doesn't just go away, regardless of how much work you put into it. But it sounds like you devised strategies to overcome anxiety; you've done really well to do that!

On the possibility that you just got really good at masking... it's a possibility, but I don't think so. When you mask, you still make careless mistakes, you're still clumsy, and inattentive. Sounds like you know enough about ADHD to know if that was still you. Due to social pressures, women have a tendency to naturally, subconsciously mask, before they even have the awareness to mask as a conscious strategy. So, talk to women who were diagnosed late, and see if their experience with masking matches your own.

[STEM_Dad]

Some people can be notably affected by ADHD as kids, yet "outgrow" the disorder by the time they are adults. I am not sure what research has been done on this.

Perhaps your biological and neurological development has caught up to where you needed to be. Lifestyle changes can also have a significant effect on how you feel and can perform.

For instance, let's say you decided to take up yoga or a sport. Physical activity which involves coordination and balance has been proven to help people with ADHD to perform better in all areas (helping some people a little and others a lot).

Food sensitivities can also have a large effect on a person. I've known some people who behaved very differently after eating food that they had a sensitivity to. One boy I knew was highly reactive to a red food dye, which would drive him to his most hyperactive behavior. (He was somewhat hyper even on his meds, but just that one ingredient would seem to completely counteract the benefit of the meds, and then some. It would take about 2 hours to wear off. I know that he definitely has an ADHD diagnosis.)

A girl and a boy that I knew at different times would seem completely neurotypical, I think with no need of meds. But if they ingested wheat products, they each would become sleepy, distracted, and very forgetful. It was probably a gluten sensitivity, but that was years before I had ever heard of gluten. (In their cases, I'm not sure if either one had ADHD. Possibly not.)

Hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism or hypoglycemia are just a few biological conditions which can cause attention issues, but I'm sure a doctor would likely have tested for any of "the usual suspects", before pronouncing ADHD as a diagnosis. Yet, it's impossible to check for everything.

-----

I have had the same ADHD traits since my youth, but because I was so interested in school, it didn't hurt my academic performance much. However, it caught up with me in adulthood. My Inattentive traits have hampered my college and career performance. I finally got a diagnosis as 45 years old, and have found that medication has helped me greatly. But looking back on my life, I can now see very clearly that the ADHD was there all along, at least back to First Grade.

[Hyperasfugggg44]

It’s tough to say what created the behaviors you remember. The childhood forgetfulness could have been triggered by the stress of just being a kid, or being immigrant because I’m sure that created its own distraction, maybe your parents who weren’t checking in on you and you were suffering, maybe you were eating a lot of sugar and hyper and forgetful, maybe you are slightly on the spectrum, maybe you are creative and were your head and lived in a little world in your head to cope.

ADHD is such a funny thing and people want to find the reason why they behave the way they behave.

Ultimately if you are able to focus and not feel hyper and distracted as hell then that’s amazing. If you still have issues and it affects your work or relationships then I’d say maybe explore a few things. If you aren’t experiencing them now you are prob fine and even if you have or had ADHD symptoms I’d say don’t try to diagnose the past. Who knows? It would be tough to tell.

If you can let the past go, Laugh at being a goofy kid and thank goodness you had the IQ to mask, mirror, or learn social behaviors and learn how to cope in a new culture and in a complex world in general, then you can let go of the past a bit.

I’m 44 and still trying to figure out how not to lose things and not scare people off with my overactive energy. I mirror and mask like a mofo, and I pat myself on the back for not feeling like an space alien lol in social situations.

Embrace the positive and celebrate your growth!!

Ask your mom to help you celebrate your growth!

[lodopo]

Great post and there is a lot here to discuss..It sounds like you really struggled with time management when you were a kid. But there is so much to what you said.

First, why didn't you have a good relationship with your parents? This can lead to massive anxiety in a kid (and an adult), and possibly inadequate prep for school and the responsibilities that come with it.

Anxiety can be very distracting and make you forget things, so can depression.

Not too long ago, ADHD was a less popular diagnosis and it has been assumed that people can learn to manage some of what they are struggling with by being smart, getting in trouble so many times, that they are hyper-organized, or just figuring it out.

What is so often the results in adhd symptoms is low-self-esteem - people feels like they have something wrong with them because they can't manage themselves in relationships and or at school, multitasking, or emotional regulation.

That's the worst in my opinion.

[Thunk]

Thank you all for your responses! They make a lot of sense and I see where u are coming from. Likely there is a crossover in symptoms with other mental health issues. And maybe what I experienced as a child is more common in young kids and I just outgrew it. It was still very helpful what you wrote me, thank you (:

So, for anyone who is maybe interested in more detail. My relationship with my mom was very poor growing up. She battled depression herself, having a rough upbringing she couldn't provide me the warmth I needed as a kid. I was very creative and always up for adventures, but my parents neither had the time nor the patience for me most of the time. My mom lost temper quite easily and I was shouted at for no reason every other day or so. All of this contributed to me developing depression myself, feeling like an outcast and closing up. It very likely led to anxiety which I didn't know how to explain as a kid, but I was always on edge, always uncomfortable around others and wanted to sit my little corner, because I felt like everything I did was wrong.