Bristol Girl Scout Educates Community About ADHD For Gold Award Project

BRISTOL, RI — A girl scout from Bristol has earned the Gold Award, the highest honor in Girl Scouting, after she created a presentation to educate the community about ADHD and similar disorders that are often co-morbidities.

Isabelle Sharp received the award after completing her project "ADHDmons (Life with an Invisible Disability)."

Sharp created five illustrations to show how she lives with ADHD, including the use of accommodations and how she tries to positively react to make others aware of their unintended ableism. She incorporated her illustrations into a slideshow that was used to educate the community, including educators, parents, students, and other neurotypical people, as well as the neurodivergent/neurodiverse community.

Sharp's project aimed to help neurotypical people gain empathy for those living with ADHD. She said she hopes her Gold Award project will create a healthier and more understanding community.

"Bringing awareness to ADHD and ableism was important to me because I have felt misunderstood and out of place for most of my life," Sharp said. "From elementary school to high school, I did not fit into the neurotypical student mold that most schools' curricula are built for."

Sharp said she was not diagnosed with ADHD until the end of seventh grade, because she excelled academically.

"Even once I had been officially diagnosed with ADHD and had accommodations approved, it was still difficult for neurotypical individuals to understand that my symptoms manifested because of my ADHD and that I was not choosing to do — or to not do— something," Sharp said. "Thankfully, I had a few teachers who were very interested in learning more about my disorder and even provided additional accommodations to show that I mastered the material. My parents and I were surprised that some teachers did not know much about ADHD or executive dysfunction which is often caused by ADHD. By bringing awareness to ADHD and ableism to the Bristol-Warren community and the school district, my goal is to help other students find themselves better understood by people who have gained empathy for individuals with invisible disabilities."

Sharp said she will attend Syracuse University, and a big part of why she chose the school was because of its robust center for disability resources and its ADHD/executive functioning program.

"I am thankful to be in such an inclusive and accommodating environment, and I hope that my project will help further ADHD and ableism awareness to foster such an inclusive environment in my community and beyond," Sharp said.

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