Labels, labeling, and evaluations

Q: I don't want my child 'labeled'. Why should I get an evaluation?

Answer:

I advocate for any parent of a child with significant difficulties to have a professional evaluation done by a neuropsychologist or psychoeducational evaluator. While a "diagnosis" or "label" is part of the outcome, to me it is NOT the important part. The important information, for any parent whether home schooling or having your child in public school, is the information on strengths, weaknesses, learning processes, etc. that are studied during the evaluation. Also, you don't HAVE to use the 'label'; you can simply refer to your child's strengths and weaknesses.

While a parent may know their child is not good at memorizing, the parent won't know exactly why, or how to circumvent the problem without a thorough professional evaluation. The child may have problems with short term memory, long term memory, sequencing, may have visual-motor integration problems, etc. Without knowing where the short-circuits are, it is like finding your way in the dark to try determine which way your child learns most effectively. If you know the child's neurological strengths, you can use them to teach the child. If you know the child's neurological weaknesses, you can seek out programs to strengthen the areas of deficit.. and you'll know which 'behaviors' a child exibits are due to neurological issues rather than true 'behavior' issues.

For example, if a child is pitching a fit because he doesn't want to wear the green shirt.. It is easier to determine if the child is pitching a fit in an attempt to 'control' their parent, or because he has sensory integration issues and the fabric on the shirt is too rough IF you know the underlying neurological problems your child has. Particularly when a child is young and doesn't know to voice his hatred of the rough fabric, it can appear that the child is being defiant, when in fact he is terrified of the green shirt's fabric.

While I think a parent can "get by" without professional evaluations or diagnosis, getting by without them can lead to assumptions about behavior vs. disability that can be detrimental either way. If a behavior is assumed to be due to disability when it's not, the child can learn destructive means for controlling those around him. In other words, he could become a big behavior problem while having everything dismissed as being due to disability when it might not be.

If the behavior is assumed to be due bad behavior and it is really due to disability, a child could be punished repeatedly for a 'defiant' behavior that is really part of a neurological disability. This is extremely devastating to a child's self-esteem because as much as he WANTs to be 'good', the child can't be. Then he begins to think of himself as a bad person. I see this with children who have learning disabilites who throw tantrums over doing school work and people assume it is because the child is just being defiant, when it is really that the child has reached a frustration level with the work that he can no longer cope with. When alternate strategies are put in place and a child is allowed to 'get frustrated' and supported through it, things go MUCH better.

So, that is my general take on evaluations vs. diagnosis. I don't think the diagnosis itself is important, but I do think knowing the actual underlying processing, sensory, and learning issues is critical for effectively teaching and raising a child with neuorological differences that affect them daily.

Best Wishes,
SandyKC

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Labeling And Evaluations?