I Was Diagnosed With ADHD — at 65

The writer always wondered why reading and school seemed so much harder for her than others

Joyce Maynard,

AARP

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Published April 04, 2025

Stuart Bradford

The revelation came a couple of months after my 65th birthday. My husband had died more than a year earlier following a brutal battle with cancer. In the aftermath, I returned to college, having dropped out after my freshman year, 46 years earlier.

I loved being back at school, the same one where I’d started out. But as had been the case all my life, reading was hard.

Three weeks into my first semester, I stayed up late to prepare for my French exam. I felt confident I’d do well.

In class the next day, my teacher handed back my exam: D-minus.

“Have you ever been tested for learning differences?” she asked me.

The last time I was in school, the term “learning differences” didn’t exist. If you did poorly in school, you were stupid, simple as that. As for me, I faked a lot. My shelves were filled with books I hadn’t finished.

My reading difficulties had been my shameful secret. Even more so because I was a writer. How could a person write books if she had difficulty reading them?

I made up for my weaknesses as a student by bringing another set of skills to the table. I could think outside the box. It was trying to stay in the box that felt so difficult and unnatural.

My brain didn’t take easily to words on the page. I’d open a book, and for a few paragraphs I’d be doing fine. Then a thought would come to me. Maybe I’d feel a sudden impulse to ride my bike, play a song, take out my oil pastels and draw. The advent of the internet presented a vast landscape of rabbit holes to explore. Now, in addition to all the other subjects of interest swirling around my head, there existed the option of clicking a button on my laptop and checking out a video of the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, or the work of a painter I loved.

I could hold on to images. It was words — the tools of my trade — that opened the door to a universe of distractions. Words led me to ideas. Ideas didn’t simply land with me, they carried me away.

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At the campus Resource Office on Disabilities, I spent weeks being tested by a specialist. Her assessment was eight pages long. I scanned them in my usual manner — eyes darting to the bottom of one page, then back to the top of the previous one and back again, with a quick glance out the window, to a bird at the feeder. I took in the words in the final paragraph: “Severe ADHD … Reading comprehension level: 17th percentile.”

A wave of relief washed over me.

I’d spent my entire life inventing tools to compensate. I got up early, before anyone else in the house, when fewer distractions called out to me. “Please don’t talk to me yet,” I’d say when interrupted. “I can only do one thing at a time.”

One time I made myself a cardboard enclosure that turned my writing space into a cubicle. Another time, when working on a novel, I checked into a motel for a week, barely emerging. No need for luxury, just neutral space.

My late-life diagnosis allowed me to finally understand why certain seemingly mundane tasks had always frustrated me: reading the directions on a new appliance or for a board game I bought for my children, studying a map.

I also reflected on the many times when the condition I now knew to call ADHD had created problems — forms I had signed too hastily without reading the small print (sometimes resulting in unfavorable consequences), letters from friends conveying crucial news of their lives that I had missed. I’d probably offended many people I cared about over the years without even knowing it.

But for all the challenges I’d experienced from living with my neurodivergent brain, I recognized my ADHD as a gift, too — one that’s connected to what I view as my superpower. As distracted as I can be when I fail to catch hold of words on a page, I also possess the ability to hyperfocus. The same wiring that often leaves me unable to finish reading a book allows me to write one with unbreakable concentration. The house could catch fire and I might not notice. When I catch the wave, I can lose myself in what I love.

In the end, I chose not to take a drug to address my ADHD. But not long after I received the results, I bought a number of books about attention-deficit disorder. I flipped through the pages — landing on anything that caught my eye. Then darted ahead to another chapter.

I never made it to the end of any of these books. Nor did I earn a diploma that second time around. I speak French well; I just can’t read it. But there may be no more valuable lesson I gained at college this time than what I discovered about myself. I learned to love my odd brain. It serves me well.

Think you have ADHD? Here’s what to do

If you’re over 60, chances are you weren’t screened for ADHD as a child, but it’s never too late. In fact, if you suspect you may have ADHD, you should probably seek a diagnosis: Untreated, the disorder puts you at a higher risk for accidents and injuries, as well as health issues.

Here’s how to get started:

Pay attention to symptoms. “What gets adults with ADHD into difficulty is inattention, distractibility and disorganization,” says David W. Goodman, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins Unversity School of Medicine. You can use online resources like the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale to assess your symptoms.

Look at your past. Have you always been that way? “The roots of the symptoms go back to childhood,” says Lenard A. Adler, M.D., director of the Adult ADHD Program at NYU Langone Health. If the onset is more recent, your symptoms might indicate another condition.

Get evaluated by a specialist. Your primary care physician can refer you to a specialist with a background in adult ADHD. “The evaluation typically consists of sitting down with a clinician and walking through the symptoms and the history of the symptoms,” Goodman says. “But you also want to make sure that there aren’t any other medical and/or psychiatric illnesses.”

Get more information. Being told late in life that you have ADHD can be overwhelming, but learning about the condition from trusted sources will help you better understand the diagnosis. “It’s very liberating to realize that these symptoms weren’t you as a person — it was that your disorder was unrecognized and untreated,” Goodman says.

Consider your options. There are ways to alleviate ADHD symptoms. “The medications used for ADHD are some of the most effective in all of psychiatry,” says Goodman. But follow up with your primary care doctor or cardiologist, as some of them could slightly elevate your heart rate and blood pressure. Specific psychotherapies can also help you cope with ADHD symptoms.

To find support and more information about ADHD, visit the National Resource Center on ADHD, a program of the nonprofit Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), at chadd.org.

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