Early Assessment

First off,the school district is legally obligated to test your child now. He doesn’t have to wait until he is school. Is he getting speech in the school district?
He can be getting this also. Hmm,unfortunately your Dr. hasn’t heard of “Early Identifaction” laws? Yes, there are some areas in which it could be a developmental thing,but everyone knows,including the federal government ,that Early identification is optimal.If it’s only instinct, yours is right on the mark:-)

Just one caution about early assessment done by the district. I took my son to ChildFind when he was 4. I was worried about his speech articulation and his abilities in some areas. ChildFind did an assessment of him and the results showed that he was very advanced in some areas and below average in other areas. There was big scatter among the scores, which I didn’t know then, is a hallmark of LDs. ChildFind assured me, however, that he was fine. They discouraged speech therapy, saying that his problems were developmental and they would correct themselves as he grew older. They told me it could actually be detrimental at that point to give him speech therapy because developmentally he was not ready for it.

The biggest mistake I have made in raising my son was listening to the folks at ChildFind. I figured they had an educational backaground and I did not, so they knew better than I did. I ignored my mother’s intuition.

I waited 2 more years before seeking out further assessment (this time private) and was told that he was at risk for academic failure if he did not have intervention. At this point, he had finished first grade and was having trouble learning to read. His articulation had not improved at all from the time he was 4.

It has taken 4 years of speech therapy to correct the most glaring articulation issues. The only thing left to conquer at this point is his lisp. He also had 3 years of various types of tutoring. He could use more, but we both are taking a break this year. He is at this point labeled GT/LD.

Thanks to ChildFind, my son lost 2 years of intervention. If you do have your son evaluated by the district, and nothing is found, don’t hestitate to get a private assessment.

LJ

Just wanted to pipe in and totally agree with your post. Beware these assessments done that show with composite scores that your child is average…..
When you see subtest scatter in the scores, (be sure to request all subtest scores), and the scatter is great, look further….

either by requesting the childfind agency do more testing in depth in areas that are low (request this in writing)

or have an outside agency review the childfind testing and do further assessment.

good luck in your search for solid information to help your child. It’s wonderful you’ve caught this early.

My daughter is almost 10 and has been diagnosed ADD and LD in the last 6 months. I have known there were problems since she was born, but I could not get any one to listen to me. I was told that she would grow out of it. Oh, how I wish I could go back to the time before she started school and get some help. Now we are trying to overcome 4 years of deficits as she falls farther and farther behind. The only good thing has been to finally find out what the problem is. Talk to your doctor about seeing a developmental pediatrician. My daughter was seen by one and he is trained to look for all kinds of problems. He was able to narrow it down and tell us where to go from there.
Don’t wait. You are your child’s advocate!

A good analogy is that if you’ve got one foot in the fire and the other in a bucket of ice, you must be comfortable since the average temperature would be.

We had a similar experience with Child Find at age 3- going on 4. But our dd was found to have expressive language deficit such that she did in fact qualify for services. We were told the developmental story, too early to tell if she’ll have academic problems, shouldn’t need to worry about private therapist etc.

So we did school services for 2 yrs - seeing no progress and at same time saw big red warning flags when she couldn’t remember names of alphabet or numbers like the other kids as well as other communication/learning issues.

So we got her tested privately at age 5 thru a private SLP who did an auditory processing test and then we had an OT do a visual processing test and motor skill test.

Once the auditory processing diagnosis was made we have made significant progress (she is now in top of her 1st grade class vs. bottom and has great love of school vs. hatred). We still have some more work to do, but taking a break right now. Remediation is ALOT of work and sometimes costly - but I’m so glad we invested in it now when she doesn’t have the homework and other activities that leave you absolutely no time to do it privately. It’s much easier to catch up when they are in preK, K vs. in 3rd/4th grade!

I shudder at where she would be at if we had taken the schools ‘wait and see’ advise. I’m still bitter we lost 2 critical years with them.

The sad truth is ,ANY district assessment. Beware of any of them. Unfortunately this happens at any time in the child’s future in public schools.Their will always be a hidden agenda,on the part of public school districts. Depending on the problems your local school district might have,they might go either way. If the don’t have the staff,like a shortage of speech therapists,they might try to scrimp on who they service,or if it is a lack of funds this could also happen. Or if they had too much money,especially due to the fact that most early intervention program are grants,and we all know what happens if they don’t spend the grant money.. Anyway,the point,beware always. You will never know what’s behind the evaluation. You have to be an informed consumer.

I agree with all the warnings about district assessments. I am shying from that. I was given the name of a Neuro Psychologist in Columbus. I called him yesterday, sounds wonderful and is in agreement Brian needs to be tested. Problem is he is not covered by my insurance and needs. $1,250. Add this to the 3,000 we have paid out of pocket for speech. I feel this is worthwhile as someone else mentioned and I want the best so I am willing to pay and have it done privately. I just don’t think the schools have the ability to assess him in the way I want him assessed. Thanks for all your input. It has been SO helpful. kw

We’ve had lots of various evaluations done and ours seem to average around $100-$300. Does the $1250 cover any remediation to go with the testing?

Our full Neuropsych eval was $1500, and that’s about what a good one costs around here. I don’t see how anyone could do a thorough eval for a couple of hundred. The testing alone took about 12 hours, and then there was all the work she did interpreting the results, writing the report and recommendations and meeting with us to explain it all. We paid extra for her to come to 2 IEP meetings with us, but I think it was well worth every penny we spent.

Karen

That makes sense. We did multiple evals - each was anywhere from 1-2hrs with different professionls. So by the time you add up? But we never did a full neuropsych from one person - I had already gotten a good profile of my child.

Several of our evals were free as they were covered by insurance depending on the provider I went to.

For $2500 I would want to know exactly what tests they were going to administer and see if there are any subtests that are unncessary or that can be given by an alternate (free) source- then negotiate a lower price?

I still think $2500 is expensive.

You may want to ask if the eval includes an assessment by an audiologist who specializes in CAPD. You could also ask if it includes an evaluation by a developmental optometrist, although I think that is less commonly included in a neuro-psych workup. If either of these tests are not included, you may want to get them done independently. Medical insurance often covers the CAPD eval, and usually covers at least part (sometimes all) of the developmental vision eval.

Sometimes neuro-psych evaluations done at a children’s hospital or medical center are more thorough — because teams of professionals work on them. An eval done by a single professional could be less comprehensive. On the other hand, if the professional is good, he/she can always refer you on to more specialized testing.

I am leery of testing that is solely educational and psychological. You really need thorough evaluations of the sensory/motor systems too.

Mary

I think she said $1250, not $2500. The other problem with having a patchwork quilt of testing is that you don’t have one trained professional who can look at the WHOLE picture, evaluate and interpret it for you and make recommendations for a strong IEP. For us, that was a very important piece of the services provided. (probably the MOST important part)

Our local NLD parent’s group had a neuropsychologist in to speak to us this month. One of the things he said also made a lot of sense in terms of this discussion. (and BTW, this is not the person we used, but is afilliated with a major Boston area hospital) He said that he felt that observing the child during testing was at least as important as the test results themselves. HOW a child arrives at an answer is sometimes a strong indication of how his brain works. If you take a pile of tests administered by different people and then ask any one of them to interpret the results for you, they will not have the benefit of these overall observations.

Another reason that a full neuropsych eval can be more telling than a number of 1-2 hour evals is that when the child becomes comfortable with the tester and the setting, it can affect how the child works. (another thing that’s important to know) My son was very nervous at the start of the testing. With him, stress slows him down to a snails pace. The next day, he went in with a jaunty attitude, feeling comfortable and expecting it to be fun. He worked much better that day. I think it was important for the neuropsychologist to see this dramatic change. She was then able to suggest ways of easing school transitions for him to keep “down time” from stress to a minimum. I’m sure if he had had a number of evals with various people for various testing, they would have only seen the little boy from the first day’s perspective.

I guess if your child has problems in only one area, or in areas that are completely unrelated, and is not stressed by new situations, the patchwork quit approach could give you all the information you need. Particularly if you are a lot better versed than the average parent in LD issues. In our case, we had never even heard of NLD until the neuorpsychologist told us about it. Tests saying that he was a strong reader, had poor problem solving skills and visual/spatial difficulties wouldn’t have meant much to us. We could have asked for some supports in these areas, but we would have been missing other major pieces that need to be addressed. We would be dealing with problems as they happened, always being reactive rather than being able to proactively work on the underlying deficits.

Karen

Katie,

I understand what you are going through. Our family physician did not encourage use to go forward with testing when I inquired at age 4, but did provide us with the name of an excellent doctor for an evaluation. As soon as she turned 5, I had her tested. Turns out she has a language processing disorder. I suggest that you call a few doctors who specialize in evaluating children w/ learning disablities. They will tell you at the age best to test/eval.a child. The longer you wait to have him tested the more time you waste on getting started with a course of action. The eval. is just the beginning.

By the way, turns out our physicians child has a learning disablity also. She found out shortly after I had my daugher tested.

Good Luck