If you answer ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then now is a good time for an evaluation:

Do you feel like you are ‘spinning your wheels’ as a parent, unsure what else to do to support your child?

Do you question if there is a developmental difference that might explain your child’s challenges?

Have you spent too many hours Googling for answers?

Is your child expressing negative thoughts or feelings about themselves?

Are your child’s behaviors taking over family life and causing relationships to feel strained?

Has your child’s teacher expressed concerns or suggested follow-up with your family doctor?

Is your child struggling with social interactions, schoolwork, attention, impulse control, language development, motor skills, or sensory processing?

Did your child experience a troubling event or series of traumatic circumstances that may have impacted their functioning?

Families schedule a series of 4 appointments: A 1.5-hour intake appointment, 2, 2.5-hour testing appointments, and a feedback session (1-1.5 hours). Many children are also scheduled for their own 30-minute feedback session.

For younger children (~4-5 & under), one of the testing appointments is used for observation in another setting (e.g., home, daycare, or school)

Our administrative staff will help to get your appointments set up in an efficient manner that works for your family.

Our psychologists typically spend 14-16 hours per evaluation. This includes:

Clinical time spent with the child and family completing interviews

Consulting with and interviewing other important people in the child’s life (e.g. therapists, teachers, caregivers)

Administering tests, scoring, interpreting data

Reviewing records

Completing a feedback session with caregivers and (in most cases) the child

The ‘product’ of an evaluation is a comprehensive, detailed report that covers background information, our observations, results of testing, a summary section that ‘ties it all together,’ and recommendations for ‘next steps’ to best support your child. We pride ourselves on reader-friendly, humanized, thorough reports that help communicate your child’s strengths and needs to other providers, teachers, and caregivers

We see toddlers through college-age adults for evaluations.

We do not see adults (22+) for evaluations.

Talking to your child about the evaluation

You can be seen sooner and receive your report faster. When shopping around, ask about wait times.

No matter where you go, it maybe be helpful to know that insurance does not typically cover ADHD testing, giftedness evaluations, or learning disability assessment.

We can do more: such as real-world observations and choosing the tests we believe are necessary (without insurance approval).

We do what is best for your child: We can provide more than what is ‘medically necessary’ based on insurance guidelines. This means that we can spend more time interviewing, play on the floor with your child, and watch how they interact at daycare. These opportunities provide rich information but are not covered by insurance due to ‘lack of medical necessity.’

You manage your information: You can decide who accesses your medical information.

If your child is experiencing any major symptoms of illness, including fever, cough, or difficulty breathing, we kindly ask that you contact us as soon as possible so we can reschedule your appointment(s). For the safety of others, we ask that children be kept at home until they are 24 hours fever-free, and feeling generally well. This will help prevent the spread of illness, and allow for accurate testing.

'What to Expect' handout for parents

If it has been a couple years or more, we can provide a follow-up evaluation to monitor your child’s progress and update recommendations.

If you are unsure of previous evaluations results, we are happy to provide a second opinion. We can also add on to what other providers have already done. For example, your child’s previous evalution might have resulted in a ‘provisional’ or ‘rule out’ diagnosis if the provider was still unsure if a certain diagnosis was appropriate. We can provide follow-up assessment to provide diagnostic clarity.

If you disagreed with previous evaluation results and would like us to give a second opinion, we can do that.

If another provider suspected autism but did not feel confident in assessing for or making an autism diagnosis, we would be happy to add this piece to your child’s evaluation.

If your child’s evaluation was completed through school, we can incorporate & add to the school’s testing results to create a comprehensive evaluation. We will not repeat the testing that was done recently. Schools evaluate a child to determine if they qualify for school-based services. Our evaluations have a clinical focus and typically result in a diagnosis. We also provide recommendations and referrals for school & other clinical services.

2e stands for “twice exceptional.” Twice exceptional individuals are gifted, meaning that they have extraordinarily high cognitive abilities in one or more areas. Gifted individuals are “twice exceptional” if they also have a developmental disability, such as ADHD, a learning disorder, or autism. These developmental disabilities occur at all levels of cognitive functioning, including cognitively gifted children. The way these developmental disabilities present in gifted children can vary from the “classic” presentation and may be subtler in presentation (yet still distressing or impairing). We have extensive experience in working with and understanding twice exceptional children.

Not at this time. If you are a therapist interested in joining our team, please reach out!

Find out here

The short answer is ‘yes.’ Ideally, your child should be assessed by an evaluator who is bilingual and speaks the language used in the immersion program.

Bilingual evaluations are difficult to find or not available. As a result, we do our best to provide a thorough evaluation to help answer questions about your child’s development with the tools and information we have.

While we cannot test the child in their immersion language, we can learn about their level of language functioning, learn about their phonological processing skills, and collect information from their teacher about their reading skills compared to peers in the immersion program. We can also rule out other contributing factors that might cause learning difficulties.

Much of the time, we can draw conclusions about whether or not your child has dyslexia and, either way, we can make individualized recommendations.

For in-home visits, parents will always need to be present as the work is primarily with them. Rachel will be modeling strategies with their kids, potentially, but not working 1:1 with the children.

This service is available prior to an evaluation or if your child has completed an evaluation/has received services elsewhere.

Rachel is a resource to provide information about the IEP / 504 process, provide general information about each of these, give links to websites re: advocating for what a child needs, and will reference the evaluation reports' recommendations. She is not able to take on an advocate role in this position.

What is the difference between family therapy and family coaching?

Parent/Family coaching tends to be:

Focused on the present

Designed to provide parents/caregivers with strategies, information and tools to manage a variety of challenges

Designed to be goal and action-oriented

Family therapy tends to be:

Focused on the past, including identifying, processing, and moving through current issues or in healing from unresolved past traumas

Focused on experiences, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and ways of being in the world

Therapy and coaching can be very complementary to each other!

Schedule a 15-minute consultation call if you are unsure about whether parent/family coaching is a good fit for you.