3 Ways ADHD Symptoms in Adults May Differ from Those in Children

ADHD symptoms in adults aren’t always as recognizable. This is partly because research and awareness among adults isn’t as prevalent, and partly because the percentage of adults who have ADHD is lower than the overall percentage of kids with the condition. However, the estimated 6% of adults in the United States alone who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD, may be higher than once believed.

One of the reasons 6% could be a lower reflection of the number of adults living with ADHD is that the prevalence of its symptoms can be masked or they appear to be simple forgetfulness, laziness, or irresponsibility. However, if ADHD symptoms in adults were widely known, it could be that adults would recognize the need to seek a licensed educational therapist’s evaluation to see if their overall life satisfaction could be improved with treatment.

Another reason the symptoms may not be a red flag to adults is that the children who are diagnosed as kids believe they’ve grown out of it. Some likely have, but some have not. Particularly if a child doesn’t have a supportive home life, he or she can struggle in formative education, which presents its own challenges.

These challenges can include developing an aversion to learning, academia, or the need to acquire new skills. A common example is staying relevant in the job market, but there are many possibilities.

If a child has grown up with ADHD but had parents who didn’t support the diagnosis, it presents many challenges later on. Another issue is if the parents were told the child would eventually grow out of it (without the appropriate follow-up). Either way, the cyclical impact of struggle can follow a child into the teen years and adulthood.

How Adults with ADHD Might Struggle

Beyond academic education, many people don’t realize that ADHD can stunt regular life skills. If a student has low self-esteem, he may believe he’s not good enough to aim for higher goals and stay stuck in a career that doesn’t bring fulfillment.

Adults with ADHD are reported to jump from job to job more often. This can be because they’re looking for skills they need to develop – such as executive functioning skills – but they discover they won’t find them just by having a new title.

Other adults with ADHD, if left undiagnosed or untreated, may struggle to maintain deep relationships. Dealing with impulsivity, attentional challenges, and habitual forgetfulness can be discouraging in the best of circumstances. But when your partner or spouse doesn’t realize you have a neurological root that causes some of the brain differences, it can be even more frustrating.

ADHD Diagnosis in Children

Many people are diagnosed as children because they’re in school and struggle to sit still. Some are labeled as “Chatty Kathy’s” and need support with organization and time management. When a teacher recognizes some of these signs, they may flag a student for testing.

However, when diagnoses are missed in school, it’s often because they have inattentive ADHD, which is where their impulsivity tendencies are lower. Yet, they have some of the other executive functioning struggles that the DSM-5 lists as markers of ADHD.

If teachers don’t see students talking excessively, interrupting others, or getting poor grades, they may assume that a student can’t have ADHD. This has disproportionately happened in girls and gifted students, as there has been some confusion in the past that students with ADHD aren’t high achievers.

Doctors, researchers, and teachers are starting to understand that a child can have ADHD and also be gifted and a high achiever. Highly creative children are excellent examples of students who may meet the criteria for ADHD and also possess a high IQ or exhibit significant talent in one of the arts, such as drawing or writing.

Still, plenty of students get missed in their youth, and it may not be due to negligence at all. It could simply be that a child moved frequently and skill gaps were difficult to ascertain.

How ADHD Symptoms Might Differ Between Adults and Children

While the same criteria are used in the DSM-5 for diagnosis, the ADHD symptoms in adults may not be recognizable in the same way they are in children. Some of the self-assessments adults take reflect this because an adult may be asked if he is forgetful of his keys, whereas a child might forget where he put his favorite stuffed animal.

In an adult’s life, though, there are key markers that can distinguish between simply being a messy, creative person and possibly needing to find a counselor who can walk through diagnostic assessments for ADHD. Three of those markers include:

Habitually Placing Everyday Necessities in Different Spots Many adults learn the skill of placing their keys on a hook or their wallets on a front entryway table. This often happens as they develop the kinds of responsibility that adulthood necessitates, such as maintaining a job, buying a home, or getting involved in a community volunteer role.

To maintain a career, an adult needs to be able to set their alarm, get up at the right time, manage the morning routines to get out the door on time, and grab necessities quickly. Those necessities, such as car keys, purse, and wallet, are what often get misplaced with ADHD symptoms in adults.

What seems to be lost is actually not having the systems and the executive functioning skills to create and maintain such systems, ensuring those items are where they’re supposed to be all the time.

Most of us lose our keys every once in a while or misplace our purses occasionally. That’s to be expected. However, with an adult who may have undiagnosed ADHD, the routine experience is not knowing where those items are located.

Underestimating How Much Time Something Takes or Has Taken

In school, students are on a fairly rigid schedule. Teachers instruct them on when to begin and end a test, when to switch seats, change classes, and go to lunch. But an adult has to plan out all of these for himself.

Not only do adults have to be on time to work, but they also have to decide what to wear, what they’ll need at work that day, and what kind of food to buy at the store so they’ll have something to pack for lunch. They also need the steps it takes to do all of that before they get into rush hour traffic.

Estimating how long it will take them to do those tasks can be where ADHD symptoms in adults are most easily recognizable to friends and family.

For example, if your spouse says he will be at the store for about an hour, but she is gone for three and a half hours, and it’s not a one-time occurrence, you might want to look at other time management skills in her life. She may truly believe she was only gone an hour, maybe two at most, but scoffs when you point out she was gone for three and a half hours.

Because time management skills often require thinking ahead and planning for the future, adults with ADHD may seem competent – until they’re given extra time. If you’re taking a last-minute day trip to the neighboring town and you have ADHD, it may seem like an adventure where you hop in the car with a simple duffel bag and your phone.

But if you are heading to the beach for a week, the idea of packing, planning what you’ll need, looking at how the weather will fluctuate, and making decisions ahead of time about the kinds of events you might attend is a lot. It can be overwhelming and seem like you have all the time in the world to do those things. In reality, you don’t.

Finding An Organizational System That Works in Multiple Areas of Life

One fallacy of adults with ADHD is that they’re not organized at all. This isn’t necessarily true. In fact, many adults with ADHD can be organized in their own way, in a specific area of life.

Adults with ADHD often learn to cope with how their brain operates, so they can systemize one area – often work-related – that allows them to function at their highest and best. It may not be the organizational system that a coworker would use, but it works for them. A stack of invoices that gets transferred to a new table once they’re paid, or a pile of receipts on the car’s dashboard until they’re recorded in the family budget are a few examples.

However, the issue comes into play when an organizational system that works okay can’t be transferred to other areas of life. For example, an invoice-to-table system isn’t a transferable skill to help an employee manage multiple projects that need a different kind of follow-up or that have team members who want to know the status of each one right now.

Your adult family member or friend may do just fine with work-related organizational tools, but at home, it’s another story. They rarely have clean laundry, much less folded and in their drawers; the kitchen has a revolving cycle of dirty dishes piled up on the sink and counters, and the last time they vacuumed was when Aunt Mary came to town two Easters ago.

There is support

If your loved one (or you) is struggling with any of these three symptoms and you’re wondering about the possibility of ADHD, there are as many as 18 diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5.

You can contact an office near you, where one of our intake consultants will pair you with a counselor who can walk you through the first step in evaluating how you learn and think. Remember, ADHD isn’t a learning disability, and it doesn’t mean you’re less capable. It simply means you need added coping tools and support to function at your best. Call us today; we’re here to help.