Interviews and psychological tests will help us understand the causes of your child's mood, behavior or performance issues. I will incorporate these findings with specific recommendations into a unique plan for your child. Your child and I will meet between 3 and 4 times for several hours to complete testing designed to understand how children think and learn. The psycholgical tests include: intelligence tests to evualute intellectual strengths and weaknesses, achievement tests to evaluate possible problems with reading, writing and math, specialized tests of emotional and personality funcitoning to evaluate possible anxiety, depression or other mood disorder, neuropsychological tests to evaluate strengths and weaknesses in attention and executive functioning, language processing, visual-motor functiong, learning and memory. During the time I spend with your child, I also learn about your child's social skills, ability to handle frustration and success, and ability to focus and concentrate on many different kinds of tasks.
After testing is complete, we'll meet to discuss what has been learned. This is a time to put our heads together combining what I learned with what you know about your child. I encourage teenagers and older children to participate in the discussion with their parents. Therapists who work with family members can be included in these meetings as well. These dicussions, interviews and test results provide the information I need to develop an action plan, a written summary of findings and recommendations on how to proceed. I also am available to consult with parents, teachers and doctors as needed.
As a result of this evaluation process, parents often come to a new understanding about their child, and the child comes to a new understanding as well. Often, an insurmountable problem now can be viewed as simply a problem to be solved. Strengths that have been identified as part of the evaluation process become the building blocks for future success.
