Holly Robinson Peete on Her Daughter’s ADHD

David Livingston/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Holly Robinson Peete is helping spotlight attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in girls with a new public service announcement with her daughter Ryan.

The 21 Jump Street actress and her daughter appear in the PSA, as part of a campaign to raise awareness about ADHD in girls. According to the campaign Keep Momming, girls are more likely than boys to experience inattentiveness as a symptom of ADHD than the more noticeable hyperactive and impulsive symptoms, sometimes making it more difficult to diagnose.

Peete, a mother of four, was one of those parents who initially mistook her daughter’s lack of attentiveness for something else.

“I was trying to fix all the things that were going on, especially when it came to Ryan’s daydreaming and inability to focus on her homework,” Peete says in the PSA. “There were tears — a lot of tears.”

Adds Ryan in the PSA, “It was really frustrating to get my mom to understand really what I was going through.”

Peete then says, “That’s when I thought there must be something else going on. So that’s when we talked to a doctor and she was diagnosed with ADHD.”

Since then, things have gotten “a lot easier,” Ryan says in the PSA.

Peete, who has openly shared about the challenges of raising her autistic son RJ, Ryan’s twin brother, said that in some ways, she was harder on her daughter.

“With mothers and daughters it’s a very different dynamic,” she said in behind-the-scenes footage. “We see ourselves in our daughters. We want them to be a certain way. We get more frustrated with our girls if they’re not acting a certain way.”

She added, “You have to stop and listen and take these esoteric moments and look your daughter in the eye and say, ‘Sweetie, what are you feeling? What’s going on in your life?”

Said Peete, “As a mom, all we want to do is provide answers for our kids.”

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