Diagnostic assessments for children & teens
While we focus on older children, teens, and adults, our team is trained to work with individuals across the lifespan. This includes early detection in toddlers along the continuum to adulthood.
Is an autism or ADHD assessment right for us?
Here are some common reasons why people pursue an assessment:
- Another professional has suggested you look into autism testing for your child (or for yourself)
- You recognize signs in your child and you want to be proactive in case these signs are consistent with autism
- You’ve always sensed something was different about your child’s development, and now that life has become more complex, you see that some of these difficulties are surfacing and you wonder if autism helps explain what your child is experiencing
- You want to make sure your child is getting the interventions that are most effective for them
- Perhaps your child had an assessment when they were younger but you have wondered if something was missed; or, you would like a re-evaluation to address new changes or concerns
What is the process of testing?
Intake
An assessment starts with an initial intake meeting. For a child or adolescent, the first meeting is typically for parents. Older teens may join the parent intake or attend their own subsequent intake meeting. During the intake, we review your reasons for seeking the assessment, your specific goals, and primary concerns. The clinician will also ask you for background information, like family and medical history. At the end of the intake, we collaboratively discuss a game plan for the rest of the assessment.
Testing
This typically involves the ‘gold standard’ measures for autism, including the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and/or the Monteiro Interview Guidelines for Diagnosing the Autism Spectrum, Second Edition (MIGDAS-2), and a measure of adaptive functioning. The ADI-R is an in-depth developmental history interview, usually conducted with parents. The ADOS and MIGDAS are play-based or conversation-based structured interactions conducted with the client. Depending on your specific concerns or goals for the assessment, it may be informative to talk with teachers or other providers or to do other testing, like cognitive, achievement, or executive functioning assessments. We always discuss this with you and individualize the plan to meet your needs.
Feedback & summary
Parent Feedback
Usually about 2 weeks after we complete testing, we meet go over the results, clinical impressions, and recommendations and next steps together. We will review a written outline of your results together. We believe that the assessment process itself can be therapeutic. It can help explain a person’s experience and provide a framework to help others understand your child. It can lead to “ah-ha!” moments, provide validation, and facilitate insight. Some people describe this as a big relief. But having specific recommendations for next steps is also an integral part of the process, and we want to make sure you have a plan in place once the assessment is complete. Recommendations may include (but are not limited to) suggestions for interventions as well as potential accommodations for school.
Child / Teen Feedback
We offer the option to have a subsequent meeting with your child or teen so that we can help explain the results of the evaluation to them directly. During this meeting, we review a letter that we have written to your child, walking through the results of the assessment in supportive, neuro-affirming language. We talk through their incredible strengths while helping to explain areas of challenge. We are here to answer questions and provide useful tips for next steps too. These meetings are empowering and can provide validation and clarification for your child.
Comprehensive written report
About 4-6 weeks after your assessment, we provide you with a comprehensive written report, elaborating on the outline we reviewed during the feedback meeting. The report includes details of the testing process, test scores, a summary of the findings, and an outline of recommendations. The report is given directly to you, and it’s up to you who you’d like to share it with. You may decide it’s helpful to share this with schools or other professionals working with your child.
Common concerns about testing
“I don’t want to label my child.”
This is a valid concern. We don’t want to influence how others see our child or make assumptions based on a diagnosis. We see a diagnosis as a framework to help us understand our child, our partner, or even ourselves. It can facilitate empathy and compassion. Children are who they are; we are who we are. A diagnosis doesn’t suddenly change who someone is; it helps explain what we may perceive as different. It helps us figure out where one’s strengths and challenges are so that we know where to focus our attention and target our intervention.
“I don’t want other people, especially teachers or family members, to judge my child or see them differently.”
It’s your choice who you share the report with, and you are not obligated to share it with a school or other professionals, or with family members. We do however recommend sharing it with school staff if there are accommodations that could be helpful in the school setting. We can help facilitate this by outlining suggestions for accommodations and communicating with school staff.
We also believe in highlighting strengths! Sharing the diagnosis with others also means educating them about the amazing unique strengths that many neurodivergent people possess. For example, you can start the conversation by highlighting someone’s skills (“You know how John has incredible memory?” or “You know how Anne has incredible knowledge about her interests?” or “You know how Jack becomes super dedicated to his projects, where he can intensely focus until he finishes it?”). You might even remind your family member that you never had to teach your child these skills. But there are other skills that other people may have picked up more easily – like reading subtle facial expressions or tone of voice – that your child may need more support with. In other words, explaining that someone is neurodivergent does not mean you are disclosing terrible news; instead, this is an opportunity to point out the unique and diverse ways that your child processes the world, and appreciate how a diagnosis helps make sense of it.
“I don’t want my child to think there is something wrong with them.”
This is all dependent on the approach we take as parents and clinicians. The goal of an assessment is not to figure out what is ‘wrong’ with someone. It is to find out their strengths as well as challenges, what makes them unique, and how they interact with the world around them. Most kids and teens like the idea of finding out more about how their brain works.
It’s been our experience, after years of conducting diagnostic assessments for autism and ADHD and other conditions, that older children, teens, and adults sense when their brain works differently from ‘neurotypical’ people. Learning more about this… that there is a name for it, that there are others who also have unique ways of processing the world, that there is an explanation for why certain things may seem more difficult whereas other things come easier compared to their peers, and that neurodivergent people are successful and make wonderful contributions to this world, can come as a huge relief. It can be validating to learn that yes, your brain does work a bit differently, and there is a reason why!
Having a diagnosis doesn’t give someone something to fight; it helps them understand what they have been up against, and which strategies work best for them.
Other concerns?
An autism and/or ADHD assessment answers the question, “Does my child meet diagnostic criteria for autism or ADHD?” During this assessment, we also screen for additional psychiatric symptoms to help us determine the differential diagnosis, and we may include cognitive testing if relevant.
If there are additional questions related to academic achievement, personality, and other neuropsychological processes like memory, please inquire about our program for complex assessments, in collaboration with our testing partner, Dr. Palm, founder of the Southern California Center for Collaborative Assessment. This can also be discussed at your first intake meeting.