When your adolescent is struggling, the most helpful first step can involve a careful assessment of the factors that are contributing to the struggle. Our team will work closely with you to identify the specific question or questions you would like an assessment to address and then to develop an assessment process that will answer your questions. We offer several different types of assessment:
If your child is struggling with school or learning, an evaluation may be helpful in answering questions such as:
In a psychoeducational assessment, a clinician will work with your child individually to assess cognitive ability, academic achievement, memory and learning, and social and emotional functioning. A neuropsychological evaluation is similar, but in addition to the areas outlined above, provides a more in depth assessment of strengths and needs underlying the learning process, including linguistic processing, visual, perceptual and motor skills, attention and executive functioning. A neuropsychological evaluation can address all of the questions addressed by a psychoeducational evaluation, and is particularly appropriate in more complex cases or when investigating how brain or other medical disorders might be affecting learning.
Through a careful integration of these assessment results with feedback from parents and classroom teachers, and observations of behavior in the office and in the classroom, the psychologist or neuropsychologist will develop an understanding of the barriers that are getting in your child’s way. You will be provided with a written report of the findings, along with a specific list of recommendations tailored to meet the needs of your child and your family. Our team, with your consent, will participate in meetings at your child’s school to share the results of the assessment and our recommendations.
For children who struggle with regulating their attention, behavior, or impulsivity, but who are not experiencing difficulty academically, we offer streamlined assessments for ADHD (children with attentional concerns who also have academic issues will be referred for a psychoeducational or neuropsychological evaluation). Psychologists will interview you and your child, as well as your child’s classroom teacher, and will administer standardized checklists to assess executive function, impulsivity, attention regulation, and activity regulation. We may also observe your child at school. We will integrate all of this information to answer the question of whether your child has ADHD. If we do diagnose ADHD, we will also provide psychoeducation on what ADHD is and what research suggests as the most effective treatments, as well as a list of specific recommendations tailored to the needs of your child.