If you can afford it, you need a quality Educational Psychological Profile on your child. If your child is not only struggling with language, but also fine motor and other pragmatic/social language things, I would highly recommend a Neuropsychological evaluation.

You look at the cost, and you say, but Jenni, I KNOW my child is dyslexic. I know he’s smart. WHY should I spend the money for a professional to tell me what I already know?

Here’s the thing. These psychologists, the good ones at least, can tease out your child’s areas of struggle but also provide you with his potential. This, to me, and to many of my older students, is worth the price of admission.

If there’s anything else going on with Johnny, chances are good that a complete educational psychological report will catch it or at least put you on the hunt to figure it out. (Other potential roadblocks to learning that might be uncovered: ADHD, expressive/receptive language issues, Anxiety Disorder, Auditory Processing issues, etc.) This helps guide you towards the right kind of professional help: occupational therapy, speech therapy, Orton Gillingham, etc. Remember, the diagnosis is medical, but the treatment is educational.

A diagnosis from a doctor allows your teachers to talk more freely about your child’s struggles and achievements. Teachers cannot diagnose your child. I cannot diagnose your child. ONLY a doctor can diagnose your child.

In my opinion, you can only trust a doctor that you hire to diagnose your child, while providing a full picture of who she is. A School Psychologist might give it a try, but if she isn’t using a WISC-IV (or WISC-V- which is brand new), it’s because she isn’t trained on it, and the other IQ measures just aren’t as good.

What to expect:

Quality educational psychological testing takes about 2 days. It should involve parent and teacher surveys along with a pre-testing and post-testing conferences. Your kids will be submitted to whole battery of tests. In addition to a WISC, he should have a C-TOPP, and various other measures to evaluated his educational performance. Based on the holes the evaluator sees in vivo, she will choose additional tests to control for variables and truly tease out the issue. For example, is she only seeing processing issues during paper and pencil tasks or is processing slow across the board? At the end of it all you will end up with a super expensive stack of about 30 pages detailing how your child learns, potential barriers to learning, and a list of recommendations that can help guide school conversations. The best folks in town are booked out for months. If your schedule will allow for a little last minute renegotiating, get on the cancellation list.

But you’re still thinking… WHY, Jenni? WHY?? It’s $2000+. I could take the kids to the beach for that.

Maybe, you wait for your tiny people. Rely on really great, high quality tutoring, push for EIP in kindergarten and first grade with super-well-trained teachers. By second grade, if you’re still grasping at straws, it’s time for a full psych. Your older struggling kids feel dumb. This starts in second grade. No matter how many times I tell him or you tell him how smart he is, he does not believe us. He can’t access education in the same way his peers do. He cannot pick a book off the shelf and quietly read. There is no “just right book” for him. He is lost, and he thinks he’s broken.

Having a person with a Ph.D. use standardized measures to assess and list strengths can be incredibly powerful. Having a doctor tell your child that he isn’t dumb, he’s actually incredibly bright and possesses the neurological profile of a warrior or a genius, can be a game changer. (Side note- Warriors and geniuses are often struggling readers- If you haven’t read David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell, stop reading this blog, go to your local bookstore, and buy it)

If these aren’t sufficient reasons, here’s a bonus:

You now have a professional with a doctorate, in writing, using standardized, nationally recognized measures saying your child is bright, not average, but bright!

Breaking this news to the doubting educators (and perhaps your in-laws) is happy-dance inducing. There is something magical about handing over that psych report to Doubting Administrator who thought Johnny was just “average” and a behavior problem. It’s validation. (It is naïve to think that validation is only for you, it’s for Johnny, too.)

Can I go on a rant for a moment about, “Johnny’s performing in the average range.”

I cannot tell you how many of my clients tell me this at the onset of tutoring. Average is incredibly broad and in some schools, incredibly misleading. My. Kids. Are. Smart. Give Johnny a story with a picture at the top, and he can probably figure out most of it without actually reading a word on the page. This is how most reading scores are assessed in lower grades in many public schools. Try giving Johnny a list of words in the absence of pictures, and let’s have a real conversation about his reading ability. Better yet, ask him to spell those same words. Johnny’s reading is not average. His ability to guess at words might perhaps be better than average. (sorry… rant over)

You know if your child is struggling. I know if your child is struggling. We know if it’s harder than it should be. WHY IS IT SO HARD? This testing answers those questions.

If your learning brain were a car engine, this psych eval would show the clogs in the lines, the broken belts, as well as miles per gallon (working memory), horsepower (verbal), and torque (processing speed). It’s a valuable tool for educators who know how to read it, but more importantly it’s validation for your child and ensures that you are seeking the right treatments.