What Should I Tell My Child?
Caregivers often ask me what they should tell their child about the evaluation appointment. It can be helpful to tell your child that the purpose of an assessment is:
To learn about their amazing and unique brain, and how they learn, think, feel, and act. This can help them, you, other support persons, teachers, and treatment team members better understand them.
To provide ideas about how to support your child, teach them to advocate for themselves, and help teachers and treatment team members know how to work with them and/or tailor information and activities to their learning abilities and needs.
To help with gaining self-knowledge, cultivating healing, wellness, and deeper connections, and to move toward authenticity and joy.
You can also let your child know I am curious about what questions they may have about themselves and/or what they are hoping to learn from the evaluation process. Helping your child verbalize their own assessment questions will not only help me help them, but will get them more involved in the process itself. They may need a little time to think over what questions they have and get their thoughts together, which is okay! They should not be rushed to come up with a list of questions.
It’s also okay if their mind goes blank when asked what questions they may have and/or they cannot come up with anything before their appointment. Sometimes children may feel something is “off,” but aren’t sure why or how to describe it. This can be a normal response, and we’ll continue to explore this together the day of their appointment.
Your child and I will do different activities to help me better understand how they work with different types of information, what their strengths are, and why some things may be difficult for them.
Some of the activities will seem easy, while others may seem hard. Additionally, they may enjoy some of the tasks, while they think others are boring. Your child is not expected to know all the answers or know how to do everything; after all, no one can know everything and none of us are perfect! Rather, their “job” is to try their best and try not to give up when tasks become difficult so we can figure what their brain is good at or what their brain may struggle with.
If they are open to such exploration, we will chat about their interests, what they like to do, school, friendships, family relationships, their thoughts and feelings, and their feelings and reactions to therapy or participating in other mental health services. We’ll also try to figure out why some things are hard for them.
It can also be helpful for your child to know that I am not a doctor who gives shots or completes well-child examinations. Assessment tools utilized also do not involve attaching individuals to machines, using X-rays, taking vital signs, or completing lab work.
