Psychological Diagnostic Evaluations Of New York

I’m posting this again because a parent whose child I evaluated told me yesterday that teachers kept telling her that her child would eventually catch up in reading. Maybe that is true for some children but it is not true for all children. Reading interventions are most likely to be successful in remediating dyslexia when they are provided in kindergarten or first grade! The catch up myth does children with reading issues a huge disservice by delaying evidence based intervention. If you have concerns about your child learning to read, it is NOT too early to have him or her evaluated in kindergarten or first grade. Mispronouncing words, difficulties learning letters and letter sounds, and difficulties retrieving words of objects that they’ve learned are all early warning signs.

In the past couple of days and weeks, I have been hearing from parents and professionals that there is misinformation regarding the type of provider needed for appropriate diagnosis of learning disabilities including dyslexia. Advocates and attorneys have been promoting an idea that a neuropsychologist is required to make these diagnoses. This is factually inaccurate. A licensed psychologist or a school psychologist with the appropriate training is fully equipped to make thes...e diagnoses. Most neuropsychologists completed training in medical settings, and many are not familiar with the range of services that schools can provide. If you hear of someone perpetuating this claim, please ask them to cite their sources. A licensed psychologist IS able to diagnose any condition in the DSM-5, of which Specific Learning Disorders are several. Feel free to contact our practice for more information. See more

Inspiration Thank you @what.is.mental.illness for helping us acknowledge these traits! #cbt #cbttherapy #cbttherapist #empowering #caring #loving #understanding #therapy #motivation #newjersey #nj #acknowledgement #wereallinthistogether #love #care #post #happiness #reasontosmile

We see this frequently in our kiddos. I would also say that this can be true of kids with learning issues - they react with anxiety and oppositional behavior when they don’t have the skills to meet the demand.

We see many children who have anxiety in addition to learning challenges. Anxiety can further impact learning because children want to avoid embarrassment in front of peers, teachers, or parents. The right environment is crucial for these kids so that they feel like they can take risks in learning. It is also important for parents to learn how to address anxiety without reinforcing the need for reassurance. A new treatment out of Yale University focusing on the parents of anxious children is promising. See SPACE training by Eli Lebowitz.

Help spread the word about the scope of practice for School Occupational Therapy! FREE PRINTABLE! https://miss-jaime-o-t-p-c.ck.page/a96b7e5b43

New blog post: Do you want to know how we learn to read words so FAST? https://44to26.wordpress.com//orthographic-mapping-how-we/

Don’t sign anything without checking with a special education attorney or advocate!

A number of families have contacted us, saying that their districts are not conducting testing until the fall at the earliest. If you're waiting for an evaluation to advocate for appropriate school-based services, please contact us. We are seeing clients in person and are taking precautions to make these evaluations safe. It is important that the appropriate services are in place before September!

This is a super important message. And remember that kids are more perceptive than you think. So in addition to not showing your kids your reaction, it will help your kids if you model calmness and acceptance.

How many of you have been told: We don’t test in this district until second grade; Let’s wait and see how she responds this year; Boys read later; we can’t diag...nosis dyslexia before third grade; or simply... I don’t see a problem, other kids are further behind than your child. #UntilAllKidsCanRead #1in5 See more

A Neuropsych view: What does phonological awareness have to do with speaking, word retrieval, naming, storing and recalling (aka learning) words....? The human... brain has several input/storage systems and several output/retrieval systems. One input and retrieval system that develops for years during spoken language (LONG before learning to read and spell) is the Phonological system. When it’s working properly, your brain will begin to store words by sounds & your brain can also retrieve words by sounds. This is one reason why Neuropsychologists measure verbal fluency - to assess one function of the phonological system’s storage & retrieval, eg name all the words you can think of that start with the sound /p/, as fast as you can.....GO! In contrast, the human brain can store words by category, eg fruits and vegetables vs animals. Neuropsychologists commonly assess this semantic storage and retrieval system too and one way to measure this is the use a different verbal fluency test - semantic fluency. For example, name all the animals you can think of, as fast as you can, GO! Typically, most individuals with Dyslexia (because of deficiencies in the phonological system) will show differential performance on these measures, ie, much stronger performance on Semantic fluency (retrieving by category) and weaker performance on Phonological fluency (retrieving words by sound/phoneme). Interestingly, from stroke research, we know that an adult can lose the ability to retrieve words in one category, eg animals, but be perfectly fine with retrieving words from another category, eg fruits and vegetables or plants). This is believed to represent how one portion of neural wiring in the language cortex can be damaged by stroke and thus it has a partial impact on language functions. When the phonological and semantic systems are working efficiently, then there can be direct connections between words (phonological) and their meaning (semantic). However, this is quite a simplistic explanation of a far more complex language input/output system. Moreover, when the phonological system is markedly improved, then students will commonly show strong gains in phonological retrieval fluency, such that now their performance on these measures show that both their semantic retrieval fluency & phonological retrieval fluency are equally strong and on par with their true potential (IQ). So ideally, background knowledge (vocabulary, events, concepts..) would be well-connected to the phonological lexicon, but these language networks have degrees of efficiency and inefficiency or strength of connection or weakness of connection, which are influenced by many factors, including experience-dependent neural plasticity.

The most important element is EARLY IDENTIFICATION !!!