GUILDERLAND — She may have been named a 2016 Winning Kid by the Epilepsy Foundation of Northeastern New York. But, says Molly Foote, 9, “Most of my friends don’t even know I have epilepsy, and just treat me like a random person.”

That’s the way she likes it. She enjoys educating others about the disorder, but doesn’t want to be treated any differently from other sixth-graders.

Molly had a difficult year in the third grade, before being diagnosed the following fall, in November 2014, with epilepsy, recalled her mother, Kris Foote.

During third grade, Molly had about 20 absence seizures a day in the classroom, Kris Foote said, which meant that for about five seconds each time she would simply go blank. Her eyes would twitch a little, she would look off to the side, and stop speaking midsentence; it was as if she had blacked out while still standing or sitting, her mother said. Actually, Kris Foote said, Molly’s doctor told the family that 20 a day was a conservative estimate.

“We knew there was something wrong when she would stop dead in her tracks in the middle of the road,” her mother said.

Her condition was made worse, her mother said, by the stress of preparing for third-grade standardized tests, her mother said.

Absence seizures, according to the Epilepsy Foundation, are caused, like other types of seizures, by abnormal activity in the brain; they are most common in children ages 4 to 14. The foundation also says that seven out of 10 kids with absence seizures will stop having them by age 18.

Molly would sometimes have trouble recalling all of the information that she had been learning in class, since she had so many breaks in consciousness. “All those five-second seizures added up, and she was missing a lot of curriculum,” her mother said.

The teacher, who did not recognize the symptoms, thought that the girl was simply being “naughty” and “purposely misbehaving,” her mother  said.

“We couldn’t really say anything, or challenge the teacher.” said Kris Foote.

It wasn’t until another girl from Molly’s Girl Scout troop was diagnosed with epilepsy and the family heard about her symptoms that they realized they should have their daughter tested as well.

Molly Foote has now been on medication for about two years, and no longer experiences seizures at all, her mother reported.

Kris Foote and her husband, Molly’s father Daniel, hope that Molly’s is a developmental form of epilepsy that she will grow out of. They will have her tested in January to see if she can start being weaned off her medication.

Meanwhile, Molly Foote and her family continue to educate others around the Capital District and beyond about how to recognize the symptoms, so that other young students like her don’t need to be wrongly labeled as problem children.

Molly recently attended a Chocolate Gala to support the Epilepsy Foundation of Northeastern New York, participated in an Epilepsy Bowl-a-thon with her Girl Scout troop — who also raised, harvested, and sold pumpkins as an epilepsy fundraiser — and will participate in the Saratoga Stroll for Epilepsy in Saratoga on Sept. 11.

What does Molly Foote want other people to know about epilepsy?

She wants them to know about the disorder, in case medication would help them. “Sometimes people don’t know they have epilepsy,” she said, “and they get confused and don’t know what’s happening.”

And she wants people to know, she said, that people with the disorder are not different than anybody else. “You shouldn’t treat them differently,” she said. 

Corrected Sept. 7, 2016 to change the name for the event she is participating in Sunday; it is the Saratoga Stroll for Epilepsy.