Five months into Kindergarten, and Daniel is still struggling. Not with the concepts – he’ll happily talk your ear off about planets and how many bones are in your body, and his reading-writing-arithmetic is just peachy. No, it’s still the focus and distractibility that is keeping him from actually completing his tasks. So after our disastrous first attempt at an evaluation, I took another friend’s recommendation and set us up with a different office.
Oh, what a difference.
As you may recall, the first try involved a nurse practitioner who offered us a drug prescription within 20 minutes. This time? Yeah, a little different. We have FOUR appointments set up. Yesterday was our intake interview – mostly me answering a lot of questions while Daniel played with some toys in the office. It lasted an hour, and I felt like her questions and observations really started to get a sense of who my son is and what some of his strengths and weaknesses are. The next two are both two-hour testing/evaluation sessions one-on-one with Daniel, and the fourth is a parent meeting to discuss the findings and make recommendations. And all of this is with a neuropsychologist.
I feel much better about this already. I felt like the psychologist was really listening to me and understanding what I’m looking for. I got the sense that her focus would be to really find out what makes Daniel tick, and then how best to teach skills and strategies for him to manage his distractibility and for us to be able to parent him the best we can. Does that necessarily rule out some medical intervention? I’m sure not. But she has already given me the feeling that, whatever her recommendations may be at the end of this, they will be a lot more grounded in who my son really is and what he needs.






































