Question: What is your advice to parents seeking an assessment?

Answer: I’m often asked by parents what they should ask, and what they should be looking for when they’re looking for an assessment for their child. An important part is to make sure that the assessment is multi-disciplinary, -- that is look at more than one point of view, not just look at academics alone, or look at neurodevelopmental functions alone, but link the two in some way. It’s also important for the assessment to identify strengths, not just focus on what’s wrong, but tell you what’s working well. It’s also important for an assessment to be specific or look for specific areas to work and to provide specific recommendations. The recommendations should be individualized so they meet the specific needs of each child.

Question: Please tell us the qualities that make the Student Success Program assessment different from any other offered.

Answer: What we hear a lot about our assessments is, number one, that the kids feel understood. I think we have just incredible clinicians, -- clinicians that really enjoy working with students and families and really work hard to understand different kinds of minds. Everybody at All Kinds of Minds has that approach. One thing we hear often is that when families first arrive, they experience a tremendous sense that they’ve come to the right place, that this is a safe place and the people here are going to accept and respect them for who they are. Parents often tell me that they really appreciate just how respectful we are to them and their children. I think that is so liberating and so empowering for these children to feel that these adults are really trying to understand them. We frequently hear them say things like, ‘They’re not blaming me not being able to do math.’‘They’re not labeling me as stupid.’‘They’re not discounting the parts of my brain that are working really well, but they’re not dismissing the problems either.’ We’re helping to achieve a balance.

Question: Please describe the demystification portion of the assessment day.

Answer: When the student and the parents return from lunch, that’s when we have the demystification where the clinicians sit with them and explain what we’ve learned about that student’s kind of mind, what strengths we see, and where the specific breakdowns are that are accounting for the problems and struggles at school. More importantly, they learn what they should do about it and what the learning plan should begin to include. We give a handful of suggestions that day and provide a much more comprehensive learning plan later. The learning plan includes strategies for addressing the areas that are problematic and, of equal importance, how to build on the strengths that are already there. We think strengthening a students’ strengths is at least as important as dealing with the areas of weakness. It is very likely that these areas of strength and affinity will become the foundations of their long term success. Another thing we do is encourage kids to cultivate their areas of affinities.

Question: What are some examples of success stories you’ve seen after an assessment?

Answer: Many times, families tell us that the assessment and demystification is an important turning point for them and the student. It enables them to reframe their struggles—move from perceiving themselves as “damaged” to understanding their weaknesses in a more balanced context that includes their strengths. It is also important to realize that it will most likely take some time to see improvement and that this will most likely require and ongoing process of trying different strategies. We really don’t want to see the assessment as an isolated event, but we want to see it as a part of the understanding - it as part of a process and navigating it through life. For that reason, our fee includes three hours of follow-up to be used for the six months after the assessment. The assessment is the beginning of the process that enables the student and family see how to frame their mind in a different way. That whole re-framing is an ongoing process that needs to be continued. It’s part of a lifetime of understanding.

Read more about the Student Success Program
Learn more about Assessing Assessments