Reply to Need private school ASAP for ADHD 5yo — eloping, dysregulated, needs active learning

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Reply to "Need private school ASAP for ADHD 5yo — eloping, dysregulated, needs active learning"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I haven’t read the whole thread but I’ll add a few things. When my son started K he went from a very structured prek daycare where he’d been for years and through Covid and he had a terrible time in K at first. He was undiagnosed and would elope, have major meltdowns, was sent home from school several times for aggressive/violent behavior, had to be restrained sometimes, and it was generally hell for all of us. We got him in by a miracle for a neuropsych assessment in Dec/ January and he was diagnosed by February with Autism, ADHD. The level of services with the autism diagnosis helped immediately. He’s been on meds with a monthly ped psychiatrist since then. We begged and pleaded with the school to let him repeat K. He has a summer birthday and needed the time. We were able to get the psychiatrist and neuropsychologist write letters recommending repeating K. We were exploring how to have him repeat K privately if needed. The school agreed and it was the best decision. We got him in ABA 3x a week which really helped with the behavior regulation. We spent a lot of time collaborating between the school BCBA (behavior specialist), ABA BCBA and the psychiatrist. My son is in 3rd now and it’s not a picnic but every year gets better. He’s doing well in school (still have challenges with aggression, disruptive behavior and occasional elopement) and has remained mainstreamed.

My advice. Do not delay on a neuropsych evaluation. I know so many parents delay this. Get it now. Get the info. My insurance covered it and I’ve done it 3x now (my daughter has had one twice). ADHD is often comorbid with something else. Find out the something else. Don’t delay on meds. My child unmedicated is a completely different and farrrrr more challenging kid than medicated.

Sure you can bounce around to another school but you will just start over again with a new team and cause more disruption to your kid. I would get to the root of the issues and then deal with those. Partner with the people who are helping your kid day in and day out. 
 [/quote]

Just dropping a note here to say that my similar kid got an autism diagnosis from a psychologist at an autism clinic covered by insurance - there was no “neuropsych” needed. And this was after we already got a very comprehensive IEP under the “developmental delay” label due to motor skills and behavioral issues based on the school testing and my advocacy.

I just think it is really important for parents to be informed consumers. Anyone trying to say you need to run to spend thousands on a “full neuropsych” is misinformed. [/quote]

It really depends on the child. Some children with higher support needs can be diagnosed very quickly. Children with lower support needs often do need a more thorough evaluation. My kid may seem NT to many, loves to please other people and does great in structured environments, but really struggles with the intricacies of social communication. She needed someone to spend time reviewing her history, getting teacher and therapist input, getting input from us (parents) and testing including the ADOS.

For a complex child with a potential history of trauma I would absolutely want a thorough evaluation and that takes time, which costs money. It could be you can find a place that takes insurance to cover this, but people here have asked this many times and the answers are the same 2.plscws with long wait lists.[/quote]

Sure but where you are incorrect is that an extensive battery of standardized cognitive tests is actually what leads to better diagnosis. For a complex child, a clinical evaluation and observation are likely more important. At the end of the day though treatment is more important and [b]no family should be opting to pay Stixrud or CAAT $8k instead of getting immediate behavioral therapy.[/b] [/quote]

Strongly disagree on so many levels. First of all we paid less than half of that at CAAT for a 5 year old because at that age the testing takes less time. We also go reimbursed by insurance for most of the cost.

Second the diagnosis has been transformative for us as parents and we have no doubt it will help our child immensely when she is old enough to understand what it means. We were already doing the right therapies but would definitely have stopped had we not known about the diagnosis because our child.had improved so much. Now we know these are ongoing supports she needs.

The cognitive tests were helpful because we needed to fully understand her strengths and challenges and the school was not going to evaluate in her case.[/quote]

A “neuropsych” is a battery of standardized tests administered by a neuropsychologist generally focusing on IQ. To say you need a “neuropsych” for diagnosis is nonsensical. [/quote]

Np and no dog in this fight, but agree I don’t think a neuropsych needs to be part of a standard diagnosis process.

We used to live in dc, which is why I know this forum, and I’ve gotten a lot of good advice here over the years. We moved away and I stayed on this forum. Ds’s problems continued to get worse in k and beyond; he already had a adhd diagnosis from KKi but I was trying to figure out what else was going on, if anything. This site was completely doubled down on him needed a neuropsych. But here’s the funny thing: I had also obv been doing tons of other research for years about sns, on lots of other online resources - articles, providers webpages, forums, I had read a lot. But I had literally never seen another person online ever mention a neuropsych. Ever. We had a psychiatrist for ds meds at the time, and I asked her about doing one - she certainly hadn’t brought it up. And we had a pretty good relationship with her by this time, so she was like that’s fine but kind of weird, and she sent us off the closest person - who was about 1.5 hours away from us. And we live in a pretty moderately sized metro area with a ton of medical resources. Again, it just seems like doing neuropsychs is not at all a standard part of the process, but really is a self perpetuated thing on this forum.

FWIW we did one and I neither found the results super reliable (there wasn’t any magic to it, the doctor was just doing a lot of the tests that we’d already had done piecemeal by other providers - adhd, asd, iq, social pragmatic testing etc), and the output was not super useable, it was a lengthy wordy report that didn’t seem highly personalized to anyone who had already read a lot about adhd and asd. I guess the most helpful thing for me was that it told me that there isn’t a black white diagnosis for mental health stuff - in other words, even the most super star diagnosticians were just using the same crappy questionnaires that every other doctor is applying, [/quote]

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