Psychoeducational Evaluation and Testing
You may not know exactly what needs to be assessed, but you know more information would be helpful. What can help your child learn? How can they get the support they need? Psychoeducational testing might be the best next step. Below you’ll find a description of our psychoeducational evaluation services. When you’re ready to schedule your testing session, please click the ‘Schedule Today’ button. Then, you’ll connect with us and get the process started.
Purpose of a psychoeducational evaluation
Psychoeducational testing ends the guessing game. The goal is to identify the root cause of poor academic performance in children and teens. This assessment can identify both your child’s strengths and areas of weakness. Allowing the strengths to be amplified and the weaknesses to be targeted and overcome.
For many children, having a psychoeducational assessment performed is the first step. Often, getting help begins with an accurate diagnosis (i.e., Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Our psychoeducational testing services help with this. Then, your family can begin accessing a range of timely interventions and support programs. In other words, psychoeducational testing has many benefits. It can be the first step to getting your child the services they need to be successful in school and life.
Signs that a psychoeducational evaluation is needed for your child
- Speaks later than most children
- Pronunciation problems
- Slow vocabulary growth, often unable to find the right word
- Difficulty rhyming words
- Trouble learning numbers, alphabet, days of the week, colors, shapes
- Trouble interacting with peers
- Difficulty following directions or routines
- Fine motor skills slow to develop and avoids handwriting
- Slow to learn the connection between letters and sounds
- Confuses basic words
- Makes consistent reading and spelling errors
- Slow to remember facts
- Slow to learn new skills, relies heavily on memorization
- Impulsive, difficulty planning
- Trouble learning about time
- Avoids reading aloud
- Trouble with word problems
Symptoms of AD/HD
- Often becoming easily distracted by irrelevant sights and sounds
- Often failing to pay attention to details and making careless mistakes
- Rarely following instructions carefully. Completely losing or forgetting things like toys, or pencils, books, and tools needed for a task
- Often skipping from one uncompleted activity to another.
Components of a psychoeducational evaluation
- Cognitive processing abilities (including logical reasoning, processing speed, memory, attention, and executive functioning).
- The current level of academic knowledge in various subject areas such as reading, writing, and math.
- Screening for social, behavioral, and emotional functioning.
Our Approach for psychoeducational testing
A psychoeducational evaluation begins with an initial interview with parents and/or students. Additionally, the evaluator will look at all of the student’s records. The initial interview allows us to fully understand the problems your child has had academically. We want to understand where they struggle both now and where they have struggled in the past.
Next, cognitive testing is done to gain an overall view of your child’s strengths and weaknesses. Often, this includes testing in reasoning, memory, working efficiency, and executive functioning. Your child is in a testing room with a psychologist or psychometrician for multiple hours and sometimes multiple days.
Then, academic achievement testing is done. This testing will pinpoint where your child falls in the areas of reading, writing, and math skills. Next, our psychologists will compare the achievement test results with the cognitive tests. By doing this, we’ll be able to better understand any differences between achievement and overall cognitive capabilities. Our team doesn’t want leave any stone unturned. Sometimes, a red flag is raised based on the test data that gives us some clue what might be going on. In those cases, we’ll use other tests throughout the testing process to get as much information as possible. Additionally, personality and emotional testing are also used to understand where your child is emotional. And, whether there is an emotional impact on your child’s academic performance.
Steps of the Evaluation Process at Sheltering Oaks near Tampa, FL
INTAKE
TESTING
FEEDBACK
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We know how difficult it can be to take the first step to ask for help. You also may have questions! Our team of mental health professionals are available to help you through this process. Call today and we will get you scheduled with one of our therapists or testing psychologists. If you have questions before you begin, we're here to answer questions about therapy, testing, our counselors, or anything else. Please fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch with you soon!
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Other Mental Health Services at Sheltering Oaks Counseling
Your family may need help in more than one way. At Sheltering Oaks Counseling, we want to meet the mental health needs of every member of your family. Therefore, we offer a number of mental health services at our Wesley Chapel, FL based therapy clinic. For example, our therapists offer Christian counseling, counseling for young adults, therapy for cancer survivors and trauma therapy. We also have marriage counseling, family therapy, play therapy, and counseling for ministers. Not only can we help you in our Tampa area counseling offices, but we can also work with you anywhere in the state with online therapy in Florida.
Additionally, we offer several types of testing services, including neuropsychological testing, ADHD testing, psychoeducational evaluation, Gifted testing, and more. Finally, our specialty services for veterans and parents as IEP advocates can help you too! We would love to connect when you are ready to reach out.