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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Chiming in that most kids don't need an actual neuropsych.  It's very detailed and can offer a differential diagnosis and help determine how much of a child's challenge is based on ADHD, anxiety, speech/language, etc. (I've really generalized here).  For the most part, a regular psycho-educational assessment is sufficient.  But, if you DO need to delve deeper, a neuropsych is the way to go.  I don't believe most school districts in this area can do neuropsychs because they are proscribed from using the broad range of evaluations/assessments/subtests the private sector has available.  The school district usually specifies which tests their staff can administer and which ones they cannot. [/quote]

Seconding this! You can get a private psychological or psychoeducational eval that is just as (if not more) helpful than a neuropsych. People on this sub often don't seem to understand what a neuropsych eval is, which is "to assess the extent of impairment to a particular skill and to attempt to determine the area of the brain which may have been damaged following brain injury or neurological illness" (according to wikipedia - just to get a quick description). For my kid with ADHD, it is not helpful to know that ADHD is related to frontal lobe dysfunction - which is the crux of neuropsych. For most kids this is true. Understanding the functioning of specific brain areas rarely translates to useful information.[/quote]

12:42 here. Your view of what a neuropsych evaluation is is outdated. Even your source for a definition (Wikipedia) notes that your view that a neuropsych is for assesing the impact of injury/illness, is a 'traditional' view, and that it is now used to assess behavior and cognition outside of injury/illness.

Two of my kids have had multiple neuropsychs and while particular brain areas may have been mentioned, it wasn't the focus except in those areas where it was critical for us to know what was going on. Younger DS has a language/communication disorder and we needed to know if the issue was related to the processing of sound, processing of language or a combination. This was not caused by injury/illness. This could not have been done by a psychoeducational evaluation.

The neuropsych also better identified how much of our DSs learning disabilities were a result of attention deficits, language deficits, anxiety, behavior, etc. and the interactions of these. Because the neuropsychologists had many more assessments/subtests available to them and because they have greater education and experience than most school psychologist, a psychoeducational evaluation wouldn't have helped.

Finally, a neuropsych evaluation delves much deeper than a psychoeducational evaluation. When there are deficits, neuropsych should always be more informative and helpful than a psychoeducational evaluation. The question is if that level of information is really needed and can you afford it.

My kids have also had multiple psychoeducational evaluations. For one kid, by upper ES, a psychoeducational evaluation was sufficient. My DS with the language/communication challenges absolutely needed every single one.[/quote]

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