3 generations of ADHD…and masking (Zoe Plotnick’s story)

At 14, Zoe Plotnick told her mom, “My brain’s broken.” Zoe wanted an ADHD evaluation, but her mom discouraged it, pointing to Zoe’s good grades. Zoe was eventually diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. She also learned that her mom was hiding her own ADHD all along.  

Now Zoe, who’s a teacher, is unpacking the ADHD stigma that her family has carried for generations. And she’s advocating for her daughter who, in a twist of fate, was diagnosed with ADHD at age 14 — the same age Zoe was when she tried to get evaluated the first time. 

Want to share your “aha” moment? We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at ADHDAha@understood.org.

Related resources

• Is ADHD hereditary?

• Masking my ADHD at work was exhausting, so I stopped 

• How do I emotionally prepare for ADHD diagnosis? 

Timestamps

(01:10) Zoe’s pandemic “aha” moment

(03:23) Pushing for an ADHD diagnosis as an adult

(05:22) Growing up with undiagnosed ADHD

(09:17) Asking for help when Zoe was 14 

(12:32) Generational ADHD shame and masking

Episode transcript

Zoe: When I was 14, I was like "Mom, I know something's wrong with me. Can I get evaluated? I know my brother got an evaluation, liked his difference, got a name and it got a treatment." And she said, "Oh well, your grades are good enough. I don't really see what the point in getting you evaluated would be." And I don't want to throw too much shade at my mom here because my mom was doing the best she could. What I found out years later, she had an ADHD diagnosis and she was taking stimulants the whole time.

Laura: This is "ADHD Aha!," a podcast where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they have ADHD. My name is Laura Key. I head up our editorial team here at Understood.org, and as someone who's had my own ADHD "aha" moment, I'll be your host.

I'm here today with Zoe Plotnick. Zoe is a teacher who wrote in to share her story of being diagnosed with ADHD during the pandemic. How are you today, Zoe? How's it going?

Zoe: Not too shabby. How are you?

(01:10) Zoe’s pandemic “aha” moment

Laura: I'm OK. Could you start by setting the stage for me and for our listeners of what was going on during the pandemic that was perhaps an "aha" moment for you?

Zoe: I don't know that it was so much an "aha" moment as much of a core memory unlocked moment. But so, during pandemic, we were teaching virtually, and of course, you know, our students, they have social needs in addition to academic needs. So, a lot of us were kind of doing sort of a lunch bunch sort of thing where if you wanted to just during your lunch break, come in and log into the teacher's Google Meet and have casual conversation you could.

And every single day this one kid, I'm going to give her a pseudonym: Tegan. Hopefully, if she ever hears this, she'll recognize herself. Bless you, Tegan. Tegan came to my lunch bunch like every time, and we were sitting and chit-chatting and she had an ADHD diagnosis. She was open about it. She's like "Yeah, I have ADHD," and she was listening to me tell some, I don't know, rambling story, and she said to me "No offense, Ms., but you kind of sound a lot like me." And my immediate reaction was, of course, like, "Oh no, how could I be offended? You're amazing."

But I went home and I thought about it and kind of was like, "Oh yeah, I know. It has certainly crossed my mind. There's a family history." I had suspected, like off and on for a long time that I had ADHD that just kind of put it in the back of my mind because I'd been led to believe like, well, you know, maybe you have this difference, but it doesn't affect your life because you don't check off the right boxes for intervention.

Laura: Am I right that you didn't immediately call your doctor and say, "I'm going to get evaluated" right after that?

Zoe: When I was teaching, it was, it was just I didn't have time to pause. And for a bunch of reasons, I ended up leaving teaching and I moved to working at the university library. So, I had I had time for the first time in a while, and I reflected and I thought maybe now I can go and get evaluated as an adult. And I'd also been hearing from some of my friends who'd had sort of similar experiences to me where they didn't meet the 1990s idea of what ADHD looks like in children, but they knew they were different. And then as an adult they finally got diagnosed and my partner was diagnosed and he kind of encouraged me. He was like, "Maybe this is a good time to go and like get evaluated."

(03:23) Pushing for an ADHD diagnosis as an adult

Laura: So, what happened in the evaluation? Did you learn anything about your symptoms, yourself?

Zoe: I went in and did the battery and got "I see why you think ADHD, but we don't think you bombed this continuous performance task quite as hard as people with ADHD should. So, we're just going to diagnose you with anxiety."

Laura: Oh.

Zoe: And then I took that report and spoke with my primary care physician and I spoke with my psychiatrist and I was like, "Look, here's the deal. Here's my family history. You know, I can draw a picture of everybody on my mom's side who has this. And here are peer-reviewed articles that I went and like dove into the databases to get free, to say, look, you know, here's an explanation for why maybe my results don't look straightforward, cut and dry."

Laura: You kind of had to shepherd them. You kind of had to guide them.

Zoe: I had to push. I had to push a little bit.

Laura: What were you educating them on? Like, what kinds of symptoms that are actually ADHD related?

Zoe: I guess some of the factors of my school experience as a kid and my social challenges. I checked off a lot of like autism spectrum boxes.

Laura: As a child?

Zoe: Yeah, I definitely had a lot of the kind of like autism-y sort of features. You know, I walked on my toes, I still have the palate of a four-year-old. So, up until ten years ago, it was in fact like autism and ADHD were criteria of exclusion for one another. You know, it was believed that those things couldn't possibly co-exist in one person. People with autism, they need routines. If you have ADHD, you crave novelty and you're impulsive, those things couldn't possibly co-exist.

And it's like, no, the way those co-exist is that you'll impulsively do something to change your day-to-day, and then the result is anxiety. So, that was kind of, I think, the confounding factor in my case.

(05:22) Growing up with undiagnosed ADHD

Laura: Let's talk about growing up and the things that you can reflect on now that you know are ADHD related, but how that got, you know, managed as a kid.

Zoe: How it got managed as a kid is it was just kind of speckled over. I would just kind of fill in the cracks and cover-up.

Laura: Why?

Zoe: So, pretty much everybody on my mom's side has an ADHD diagnosis, and I think there's some prevalence of it possibly on my dad's side as well. And my brother got evaluated like pretty early on and he was, my brother is, he's just as smart as I am and I am just as broken as he is. But in his case, his whole package manifested in a way that wasn't like the traditional idea of what a successful student would be.

So, he was like, you know, the C student or whatever. So, he was evaluated and he was diagnosed and he was given medication. So, really the sort of "aha" moment happened when I was 14, I think. I was in eighth grade and my daughter's in eighth grade now. So, it's kind of interesting that now she just finally got diagnosed like two weeks ago and starting treatment and I'm so happy for her. But when I was in eighth grade, it kind of dawned on me that I had a kind of way of navigating school.

So, if you looked on all of the teacher comments going back years and years and years, it was always, you know, "We just wish she would participate more in class because she has good things to say. But she's so quiet and she's so shy." And I just let them think I was shy because what was really going on was that, you know, I would try to pay attention, and then something one of my classmates would say would get me onto some kind of mental tangent, like, "Oh I wonder about that." And then my brain would kind of like fall down a rabbit hole for ten minutes and then I'd realize, I have no idea what's going on in class.

Laura: I mean, listen, Zoe, like that happens to me even at work these days as an adult.

Zoe: Yeah.

Laura: We'll be having these conversations and I will get totally lost, and then it will come back around and I'll be like, in my head, I'll be like, "If you don't say anything, they're just going to think you're really smart. And just observing."

Zoe: Yeah. That was my go-to.

Laura: Yeah.

Zoe: And then once in a while, I would get an idea that was just weird and specific enough where I was like, "OK, I'm reasonably sure that this will sound smart if I say it and it's specific and weird enough that probably no one else has said it yet. So, like every like four months I'd kind of like raise my hand and the teacher would be like, "Oh wow, you know, it's like such a fascinating insight," and move on and then be like, "Cool. Now I'm just not going to raise my hand for another 4 or 5 months."

Laura: Right. Like checking the box. Sounds like you knew that you probably had it, but you were so good at masking and you would just seem shy.

Zoe: That is correct. And here's where the like, autism spectrum sort of stuff might come in here. I struggled to communicate verbally and connect with other people, but if I had the time and the space to focus and write things down and maybe visually organize my thoughts and then write it down, I could express myself in writing like nothing else.

So, I think my particular kind of coping strategies lent themselves better to functioning in a school setting than my brothers did. And that's really typical. That's why women have historically been underdiagnosed, just because, like we look compliant in the classroom when we're struggling, we we're socially conditioned to to mask and to present ourselves in ways that are not disruptive and are quiet and contained. And it's a little bit easier to fly under the radar, I think, in that case.

Laura: This is so fascinating to me because you have a family history of ADHD, you have a partner with ADHD. There's something about that masking and that compliance and whatever positive reinforcement you were getting from doing those things that like, I can't even imagine how much you were carrying around all this time.

(09:17) Asking for help when Zoe was 14

Zoe: It was complicated is how I would say how it felt. So, when I went to my mother when I was 14, I was like, "Mom, my brain's broken. And I described all of the things like, I can't. Like if someone's talking, I can't look, it just goes in one ear and out the other. Like, I cannot process anything like.

Laura: My brain's broken? Aw.

Zoe: I went home from school and it just like all hit me at once that the stuff I was doing to fly under the radar was not normal. Like the other kids were paying attention, like they were able to focus and they were able to answer questions. So, I went home and I was in tears because, you know, it's middle school and everybody, you know, you want to be normal, you want to fit in.

And I told my mom, "Mom, something's wrong with me. Can I get evaluated? I know my brother got an evaluation, like I know his difference, got a name and it got a treatment. And he's getting what he maybe needs now. And, you know, I know we're still figuring out some of the details, but at least like he's on the path. You know, could I get on that path, too?" And she said, "Oh well, like your grades are good enough. I don't really see what the point in getting you evaluated would be." I was like, "Oh OK," you know? And that seemed to make enough sense to me at the time.

Because like, yeah, you know, getting a diagnosis, getting a label. You know, it's like the '90s. We had very everyday people had limited understanding of the full spectrum of difference.

Laura: But your maturity level, you're in middle school and to observe what your brother was going through and to make connections, even though you were presenting completely differently and to know what you needed even then, and this is, I'm not saying anything against your mom like, I...

Zoe: Oh yeah, no.

Laura: That's not even the thing here. That's really impressive. But also probably really, maybe even harder to know what you need and then to not get it.

Zoe: Like now, looking back as an adult and now that like, I'm taking the right medications for me, sometimes I'll get like mad about it. I'll be like, Why? And I don't want to throw too much shade in my mom here because my mom was doing the best she could. What I found out years later, she had an ADHD diagnosis and she was taking stimulants the whole time.

Laura: Whoa. That's a big deal.

Zoe: Yes. And so, clearly there was some benefit that she was aware of beyond just getting better grades because she's taking it. But I think it was sort of like she thought she was doing me a favor by avoiding me having a label put on me. Because again, at that time, it just seemed the best information that anyone gave her was you could not be a smart kid and also have ADHD. She thought I could have better opportunities without having that.

Laura: I also have to imagine that she, and understandably so, because, I mean, how many years later is it and we're all still coping with this had whatever stigma she must have had against this label that she herself had?

Zoe: Yeah, I think she didn't get diagnosed herself until she was an adult. And I think she had in a lot of ways, similar experiences to me. Like she did well enough in school, she functioned well enough. She learned to mask and she's like, A-plus, master. I mean, she's a schmoozer. She, like, she's very good at what she does. So, she's successful in her own right.

(12:32) Generational ADHD shame and masking

Laura: This is really powerful, Zoe. This is a generational story about women and girls with ADHD. Your mom has ADHD. She was diagnosed as an adult. She's carrying stigma. She has a daughter in the '90s where there's still very little understanding, especially about girls and ADHD and the fact that they may present differently.

You know what you need. You have your "aha" moment when you are in middle school. You don't get evaluated. You carry that into adulthood and you eventually get diagnosed and are treated for ADHD. You have a daughter who got diagnosed with ADHD with your help around the same age that you had your "aha" moment. I mean, that's incredible. I mean, that is, that's like evolution, you know?

Zoe: Yeah. Out of all of us in my household, she is the highest functioning. Like of the ADHD people.

Laura: Does your daughter mask her symptoms?

Zoe: Yes, she does.

Laura: Does she do it as much as you used to?

Zoe: Probably. And it's been tricky because while I've been watching my daughter and kind of trying to help her navigate things, it's tricky. I go back and forth because on one hand, I don't want to be dismissive the way I was dismissed when I was her age. But on the other hand, I also don't want to like project my own rage at how I didn't get help when I first asked for it. I don't want to project that onto her either.

So, sometimes I have to like, hold myself back from from projecting my own, like, you know, you're just like me because she's not just like me. She's not just like a little mini-me. In a lot of ways, she is. Like, her friends can be like, she looks like you and she talks like you." But there she, there's a lot about her that's different. She has different strategies and different challenges, and she keeps her bedroom clean, which is incredible to me.

Laura: How has this affected your relationship with your daughter, the fact that you both have ADHD?

Zoe: What's wrong with kids these days has been if you go back to like ancient texts that were inscribed on tablets, I think some of the oldest examples of human historic records are like op-ed pieces about what's wrong with kids these days. And like ancient Greece, I mean, for real, like, this is a thing. But like, actually, her generation gives me hope because they really do normalize a lot of talk about just mental health and struggles. And she has a whole vocabulary that I did not have at her age.

Laura: You're part of the reason that she has that, right?

Zoe: I don't want to take too much credit for it.

Laura: Take the credit, Zoe. Come on.

Zoe: She's amazing. Like, a lot of the time, I feel like my daughter is amazing in spite of me, not because of me.

Laura: All right, then I'm going to give you the credit if you won't give it to yourself. Zoe, you are kind of at that crossroads, you know, with like the mom with ADHD and the daughter with ADHD and like, there's a lot of emotions right there in the center, right? But you have made an impact there. You really have.

Zoe: I think so. I feel like pretty happy with how we're weathering this particular thing.

Laura: Thank you for being here today. I appreciate you.

Zoe: Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you for asking me the questions and digging. I am hopeful for the next generation of young folk because they have access to stories like the ones that are being shared.

Laura: As always, if you want to share your own "aha" moment, email us at ADHDaha@understood.org. I'd love to hear from you. Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode. We have more resources and links to anything we mentioned.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give.

"ADHD Aha!" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli. Say hi, Jessamine!

Jessamine: Hi everyone.

Laura: And Margie DeSantis.

Margie: Hey, hey.

Laura: Video was produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Ash Beecher is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. Creative and production leadership from Scott Cocchiere and Seth Melnick. And I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.