Can you test a kid for ADHD without a pediatrician's referall?

[Anonymous]

I would redo the Vanderbilt, to be honest. I have found teachers to be terrible reporters in middle school, and if you are in a place where they have retakes, they may not even remember that your child is capitalizing on thr retakes to succeed bc of inattention. I brought this history to the pediatrician so that the inaccurate Vanderbilts could be placed in context. My child has severe inattentive adhd and now, when medicated, has no panic attacks and no missing assignments. Keep working with the ped and if you don’t get anywhere, go elsewhere. I don’t know that I would pursue a full neuropsych for just adhd concerns unless you have other concerns as well.

[Anonymous]

Find a new pediatrician.

[Anonymous]

We were turned down by the school for testing and went to Chesapeake Center. They were excellent but agree it was pricy and it took several days to get through the testing. The detailed analysis and results were incredibly helpful in getting our child the accommodations they needed, getting medication started, and helping us figure out how to get on the right foot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:24 again. What you need is a full neuropsychological evaluation.

It takes several hours over two days. Your child will miss two days of school, but it's well worth it in your situation. There will be an intake conversation with you beforehand, and questionnaires about your child's functioning for you and teachers to fill out, so that the psychologist can tailor which battery of tests to give to your child. There might be a dozen administered to your child. It's very serious! Sometimes teachers are not cooperative, but try to get them to fill out the forms anyway. Then the psychologist will meet with you (your child can be present or not) to go over the results, any diagnosis they've found, and next steps: they will make recommendations on what services and accommodations to ask for at school, and what medical treatment and executive coaching to seek, and explain the disorders and what you can expect in terms of development and progress. You will need to consult with a psychiatrist to ramp up meds carefully. Pediatricians are NOT good at prescribing ADHD meds by themselves, but, once your child is stabilized on a particular medication and dose (which might take a year, if you try a few different things), they can take over the prescription.

+1 this poster is spot on.

We just went through what this poster described; however, they did not obtain any information from her teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:24 again. What you need is a full neuropsychological evaluation.

It takes several hours over two days. Your child will miss two days of school, but it's well worth it in your situation. There will be an intake conversation with you beforehand, and questionnaires about your child's functioning for you and teachers to fill out, so that the psychologist can tailor which battery of tests to give to your child. There might be a dozen administered to your child. It's very serious! Sometimes teachers are not cooperative, but try to get them to fill out the forms anyway. Then the psychologist will meet with you (your child can be present or not) to go over the results, any diagnosis they've found, and next steps: they will make recommendations on what services and accommodations to ask for at school, and what medical treatment and executive coaching to seek, and explain the disorders and what you can expect in terms of development and progress. You will need to consult with a psychiatrist to ramp up meds carefully. Pediatricians are NOT good at prescribing ADHD meds by themselves, but, once your child is stabilized on a particular medication and dose (which might take a year, if you try a few different things), they can take over the prescription.

+1 this poster is spot on.

This is exactly what we experienced except our testing was done in a single day. My kids were older (10 and 13).
We did our testing at Kennedy Krieger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would redo the Vanderbilt, to be honest. I have found teachers to be terrible reporters in middle school, and if you are in a place where they have retakes, they may not even remember that your child is capitalizing on thr retakes to succeed bc of inattention. I brought this history to the pediatrician so that the inaccurate Vanderbilts could be placed in context. My child has severe inattentive adhd and now, when medicated, has no panic attacks and no missing assignments. Keep working with the ped and if you don’t get anywhere, go elsewhere. I don’t know that I would pursue a full neuropsych for just adhd concerns unless you have other concerns as well.

I would also reach out to a couple teachers re your child not turning in homework and any other ADHD issues they're having in school to get your kid on their radar and figure out who would be a good teacher to ask to do the rating. If your kid isn't hyper in class, teachers might not really be aware of his issues.

If you don't see any issues indicating a learning disability like dysgraphia or something like autism, you would probably be fine to just get an adhd assessment instead of a full neuropsych. The adhd portion of my kid's neuropsych was based on the Vanderbilt from parents and a teacher, parent interview, and a 20-30 minute computer testing portion where DS was supposed to hit a button only if a certain shape appeared, but the tester said that wasn't definitive and parent/teacher feedback was the main factor in the dx

[Anonymous]

Try this company…
https://markerlearning.com/
We had a friend who used this company for testing and were very pleased. There was no long wait to get tested and they were happy with the way the company handle the testing, as well as the low out of pocket cost since their insurance company didn’t cover it.
Good luck!