Jill M. Pellicciarini, dual MA, Marriage and Family Therapist

12/08/2025

12/08/2025

Many ADHDers grew up never knowing they had ADHD.

Not because the signs were absent, but because they were subtle, internalized, or masked.

For decades, ADHD stereotypes focused on hyperactive boys. This left thousands of girls, women, and AFAB individuals overlooked, misdiagnosed, or told they simply needed to “try harder.”

Common missed signs of ADHD in AFAB childhood include:
🎈 Being quiet, well-behaved, or “easy to manage” in school
🎈 Daydreaming or zoning out instead of showing hyperactivity
🎈 Perfectionism and people-pleasing to cover up struggles
🎈 High sensitivity to rejection, criticism, or social conflict
🎈 Emotional intensity that looked like “moodiness.”
🎈 Forgetting chores, homework, or plans despite effort
🎈 Anxiety that developed from constantly overcompensating
🎈 Messy room but hyper-organization around specific interests
🎈 Overthinking or over-preparing to avoid mistakes
🎈 Starting projects with excitement but rarely finishing them

These are not character flaws. They are early signs of a different neurotype that was rarely recognized in girls.

Many individuals learned to mask, internalize, or hide their struggles, which made their ADHD harder for adults to identify.

At Blue Sky Learning, our neurodiversity-affirming therapists and coaches help clients explore their histories, understand their brains with compassion, and develop strategies rooted in acceptance and authenticity.

You deserve to understand yourself fully, without shame or self-blame.

📩 Book a free 20-minute consult at www.blueskylearning.ca
or email hello@blueskylearning.ca

💻 Follow for more neurodiversity-affirming mental health content.

12/07/2025

Please stop being so mean to yourself about this.

12/04/2025

Managing abusive communicators

12/02/2025

Sometimes just having the vocabulary to talk about the madness of emotional abuse, can be helpful in beginning to process it.

I didn’t lose myself in that relationship.
I was systematically erased.
Every opinion I had was wrong until I stopped having them.
Every boundary I set was unreasonable until I stopped setting them.
Every part of me that existed before became proof I was damaged, difficult, defective.
And when I finally left with nothing but a pulse and a vision of who I used to be, people called it a breakup like we both just grew apart.
We didn’t grow apart. I was carved down to nothing and told to be grateful he still wanted what was left.

12/02/2025

11/30/2025

We see a lot of victim-blaming these days, but the reality is much more complicated.

11/29/2025

If they considered such things

11/29/2025

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Neurodivergence

11/29/2025

Six-year-olds feel so much more than we often realise.
Their emotional world is busy, confusing, overwhelming — and still very much under construction.

Today’s ‘A Child’s Voice’ visual gives a gentle peek into what emotional regulation looks and feels like from the inside when you’re just 6.

If you’re supporting a child with big feelings, meltdowns, or sudden emotional switches, our Managing Big Feelings Toolkit gives you the scripts, strategies, and brain-based guidance to help.
Find it via the link in comments below ⬇️ or in our Linktree Shop in Bio.

11/29/2025

When we talk about consequences, many people still picture punishment — something uncomfortable to “teach a lesson”. But that’s not what brain-based parenting is about.

This post explores what consequences are not, and why moving away from punitive approaches helps a young person stay regulated enough to actually learn.

If you caught yesterday’s post on natural and logical consequences, this builds on that understanding and shows why mismatched, fear-based, or shame-based responses simply don’t work.

Our Managing Big Feelings Toolkit is linked in the comments below ⬇️ or via Linktree Shop in Bio.