A light bulb lit up in my mind. My daughter was exactly like me. If she had ADHD, did that mean I did, too?

When my oldest daughter turned five, we moved back to America after our stint in kollel in Maalot Dafna, in Israel. The move was incredibly challenging for her. I thought kids were resilient and flexible, but the way she regressed to bed wetting and suddenly began weeping over every little incident alarmed me, and I took her to see a therapist that RELIEF recommended.

During the intake interview, after I’d detailed my daughter’s difficulties adjusting to the move, the social worker asked, “Are there any diagnoses in the family?”

“Two of my brothers have ADHD,” I told her. “They’re really, really wild.”

She began asking questions about my daughter’s personal management, her organizational abilities. Does she dress herself in the mornings? How long does it take her?

I thought of the number of times I’d left my daughter’s bedroom in the morning with instructions for her to “get dressed quickly, ’cos it’s already eight, and your carpool ride will be here in ten minutes,” only to return and see her still in pajamas, sprawled across the bed, immersed in a picture book. She’d always look up at me with confusion in her green eyes and say, “Sorry, Mommy, it was so interesting,” when I raged at her in frustration.

“It sounds like your family would benefit from some family therapy. But before we do that, I think the correct thing to do would be to see a neurologist, as I first want to rule out ADHD,” the social worker said. “I’m seeing some symptoms of it in your descriptions of your daughter.”