Son getting evaluated soon, any special preparations?

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Hello everyone,

I've been lurking off and on here for a little while since I first started down the road of the evaluation process. Now the day is coming (at least I think so) for the "real test". I'm wondering if I should come with any questions prepared or tell them about his behaviors? I told the first person who was like a gatekeeper about the behaviors (of which she and her superiors agreed for further evaluation), but I'm wondering if I need to tell the "tester" about them. As the day approaches, I wonder if I'll be doing enough for my son to get the best diagnosis.

For other parents who've been through this, are there any things you wished you should've done that you didn't or anything that you shouldn't have done and you did?

They'll have a ton of questions for you-there's nothing you need to prepare. If you have a baby book where your wrote down milestones it might be helpful to have those general time frames available for them.

I would suggest not to "prep" in anyway, especially not your child. They need to see him/her exactly the way they normally are. If it will make the testing go easier, pick a time of day and day of the week when they are well rested and not grumpy/resistant to the testing. Depending on the professional you are seeing, there will be a lot of tests involved but they're not the type you can "prep" for.

I suggest writing down everything you can think of that concerned you, with the best guesses of the dates you noticed it. They may also want to know details like what your pregnancy/birth was like, what age you started having concerns, family histories, things like that.

My DS got a dx which I thought was inaccurate because I didn't know how to answer the questions properly. For instance, can "child" have a recripocal conversation?

I said yes, because my child can converse in a back and forth manner....IF YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT HIS INTEREST. However, he cannot if you want to talk about anything else.

Does your child show you things, I said yes because if my child is interested in something he will show me... as a matter of fact he will go on for an hour about what new wrestling fact he has found..... But does he mentions other things or show me stuff in general....no.

Because I was filling out questionairres and didn't really know what the point of the questions were, my child did not get an AS dx. However, several other professionals in the field have told me that they do not feel that the test results were accurate.

All of that said, my child does not appear as obviously AS as many do - therefore it isn't surprising that with my not really understanding what the questions were - he got an NT dx. For many kids, that stuff wouldn't matter.

If they do an ADOS (which they SHOULD) they will find the limitd reciprocal interactions. If your evaluator/professional is competent (and that is a BIG IF because it's hard to find a competent one) they will see the AS. The questionaires were not as weighted as the ADOS and other tests involving my daughter. However, they do use them and it is best to answer truthfully to what you have seen in the past month or so (instead of looking back over his lifetime).

First of all, let me point out that I'm not a parent (now now, don't start throwing tomatoes at the stage ). However, I've been through a very unpleasant evaluation for ADD in my preteens, and I want to share. When I was in 6th grade, my stupid teacher didn't like that I wasn't paying attention in her class, and brought up the idea to my parents to have me evaluated; they agreed.

...10 days later...............
The psychologist sat me down at a table, and started the basic introductions and explanations of the whole procedure. That part felt a little patronizing, but I know it was "just business". Then she took out the test materials, and proceeded to ask me questions. The way she acted the whole time made me extremely anxious. The session lasted about two hours. The tests were scored, and the results were given at the next session. (This whole ordeal is described in great detail here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt103400.html).

Most of those questions caught me completely off guard! I ended up failing the evaluation miserably! Well, the shrink found nothing close to ADD, but the tests showed "immature emotional development". She gave the results to me and my parents at the same time. My mother was crying, my father was p*ssed off, and I sat there like a ghost watching them. The shrink added insult to the injury by telling them to share their feelings (!). If I had known what those tests were going to be, I'd have studied, using any encyclopedias I could find in the library (it was in 1995; I didn't even know about the internet yet).

...15 years later...............
Here I am today. I think you should spend a lot of time preparing your son for the evaluation. You didn't say what it was for, but giving him an overview of the tests would do wonder. We have internet now; search for "[name of son's condition] evaluation". Give him the gist of each test he'll have to take; no need to give individual questions if accuracy is your concern. That, plus a social story of what the exam will be like. Otherwise he might misunderstand the whole point of the test and skew his results in the process. I know I did.

Uh, thanks, Aspie1. My son is only 4 so I doubt I'll be able to prep him for anything.

For us the evaluation really was a PROCESS. It was not done and over with in one day. It played out over a matter of months. I'm sure every set of docs, school personnel, etc. have their own version of how the process goes so it's tough to give you specific advice. There should be at least two major parts to the evaluation - a lenghty series of questions for you to answer and one-on-one evaluation of your child with therapists/specialists. A third aspect that became very poignant in my son's dx was an in-class observation. DS was so charming, smart, funny for the most part with the 5 different therapists/specialists that talked to him over the course of 2 lenghty evaluation appoinments they were very borderline about dx him with anything. When the psychologist and then the autism specialist visited his pre-school classroom, the light went on! His interaction, or rather lack there of, with other children and his propensity for getting over-stimulated in the classroom environment were both key aspects that led to the dx of HFA (the autism specialist says she would have called it Asperger's but the school system doesn't recognize that as a separate category anymore so they just call it HFA).

The queustionaires that I filled out seemed never ending and I felt a bit overwhelmed at times. One set kept asking if I thought my son was on level, below level or way below level in certain areas as compared to his peers. Well, my answer to many of those questions was "He's way above his peers in that area". Thankfully that questionaire was done verbally with the autism specialist so she could figure out how to score my answers when it was "None of the above". One thing I think helped for me was that we have an older NT son which I felt gave me a bit of a basis for comparison. If your child has no siblings and hasn't been in a school or pre-school setting yet, it may be harder to judge those things that may be out of the ordinary.

MomtoS
Glad my thoughts can help. Hang in there! It sounds like it would be good if one of the people involved with your son could observe him outside of the clinical setting. Good luck1