Reply to Can I get some input on a school suggesting that my kindergartner have a neuropsychological evaluation?

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "Can I get some input on a school suggesting that my kindergartner have a neuropsychological evaluation?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My friend is a special education teacher. She says she can often tell when a child has special needs.

I have a friend whose son was counseled out of private school. The kid is definitely different. They were really offended and blames the school. I am not a professional but I can see that something is off about her child.

Some people want to help their child as much as possible and get them evaluated and services. Others do not want their child to be labeled and avoid.[/quote]

Sure, if someone is a special needs teacher. It's not clear anyone involved has expertise in this area though.

There is no harm to the child in doing the neuropsych, more info is generally good. I think the issue here is what the school intense to do with it. I think there are three reasons a school would recommend it:

1) Genuine concern for the child and a desire to meet his needs. They may have programming for ADHD or other issues and a diagnosis could get him access. They may just want to see him do well.

2) They are hoping it leads to medication because they find medicated kids easier to deal with. You can view this as good or bad or neutral.

3) They think he'll get a diagnosis and will use it to counsel him out. "Your son has needs our school is not set up to meet."

IME #2 and #3 are more likely. So I can see how, in this situation, you'd want to be cautious about how you get the neuropsych and what you share with the school. I would not want to feel pressured to medicate a kid who was diagnosed with ADHD but whose presentation is very mild (which is how OP's description sounds to me). I'm not anti meds but for younger kids who aren't having academic issues, there are other things I'd do first unless the social stuff was poor.

[b]I'd also worry about a "mild ASD" diagnosis which is getting increasingly common and can honestly be worse than no diagnosis because there are often not great treatment options and it comes with stigma/educational consequences even though kids in the category often have decent social skills and more emotional regulation and verbal skills than you expect from ASD kids.[/b]

So I'd get the neuropsych but keep the results close the chest, think hard about specifically what I want for my kid, and not be shy about getting second opinions and taking a more skeptical approach at this age/stage than the school seems to want. Very strong likelihood they have ulterior motives so letting them drive the process is a bad idea.[/quote]

This is a ton of misinformation.  First of all, in most states, if you have an ASD diagnosis treatment (therapy, social skills training, OT etc) is covered by insurance so the diagnosis actually opens up a ton of cheaper resources.

Secondly, if it is very mild, schools don’t even give IEPs for many high functional level 1 kids. so there few stigma in school unless there is a large behavioral component which isn’t true for most if not all cases.

I think you have really old outdated info.  The plus is outside private therapy is abundant for ASD and social skills and one on one behavioral /therapeutic coaching for parents is pretty awesome for any parent. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics