By the time we saw the dev ped the school psycho Ed eval was already long done so all those checklists had already been done. I'm not the poster you're responding to. I thought it was awkward but I didn't know how else it would work. It may be more the case with a dev ped who takes insurance since it's difficult for them to cover a visit without the kid present, I would think.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a bad experience with Belsito because she wanted to take a history with our kid in the room. If you use her, insist on separate appointments so that you can be frank. She also didn't ask the school to fill out any checklists, so confirm with her what information she'll be using to make her diagnosis.

We saw two different developmental pediatricians at KKI. Both took the history in front of the kid and neither asked for the school to fill out any checklists. The same goes for a psychiatrist whom we saw for one child later on.

Then I guess we were just lucky with the subsequent developmental ped and psychologist we saw after Belsito. How can you talk frankly about your child's weaknesses/challenges in front of him? And how can the doctor get a good sense of what's going on in school without getting information from teachers? (At least for us, the main problems were with peers, so getting an accurate picture of what school looked like was essential). I guess if you have a younger kid neither of those things matter, but by 4 they do.

Have you seen any developmental pediatricians though, PP? That's the topic of this thread.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a bad experience with Belsito because she wanted to take a history with our kid in the room. If you use her, insist on separate appointments so that you can be frank. She also didn't ask the school to fill out any checklists, so confirm with her what information she'll be using to make her diagnosis.

We saw two different developmental pediatricians at KKI. Both took the history in front of the kid and neither asked for the school to fill out any checklists. The same goes for a psychiatrist whom we saw for one child later on.

Wow, we've seen multiple psychiatrists, and multiple psychologists and there's always been an intake appointment where the kid wasn't even present. One doctor had him work with another member of their team on assessment tasks while I talked to them, and the others he stayed home during the initial meeting. The only exception was the developmental psychologist my kid saw before his first birthday, but then I wasn't so worried about what he'd hear at that point.

I brought a long bullet list of issues to our dev ped appt.

Anonymous wrote:We had a bad experience with Belsito because she wanted to take a history with our kid in the room. If you use her, insist on separate appointments so that you can be frank. She also didn't ask the school to fill out any checklists, so confirm with her what information she'll be using to make her diagnosis.

We saw two different developmental pediatricians at KKI. Both took the history in front of the kid and neither asked for the school to fill out any checklists. The same goes for a psychiatrist whom we saw for one child later on.

We had a bad experience with Belsito because she wanted to take a history with our kid in the room. If you use her, insist on separate appointments so that you can be frank. She also didn't ask the school to fill out any checklists, so confirm with her what information she'll be using to make her diagnosis.

Belsito. Most dev peds are going to have waiting lists so go ahead and make the appt now and let them know you'd like to be considered if they have cancellations. We saw Gersch first bc he had openings earlier but then saw Belsito and felt she had a better grasp of what was going on.

Current wait list for both belsito and gersh is January for earliest appointments. You can get on a wait list and calling for cancellations is always a good idea

Anonymous wrote:Dr. Dan Shapiro. He does not accept insurance but you can submit to your insurance yourself.

But if your insurance doesn't pay for out of network coverage or you have to hit a high deductible first and you haven't had a lot of out of network expenses so far this year, expect to pay for this out of your own pocket.

We have seen dr Elliot Gersh at Children's and like him. Insurance accepted.

Dr. Karin Belsito at the Pediatric Care Center in Bethesda.

Dr. Dan Shapiro. He does not accept insurance but you can submit to your insurance yourself.

Our four year old's tantrums have reached a level that we think needs evaluation to see if there's some cause we can't figure out. Recs in Bethesda or NW DC would be great. Thanks.