Behavioral & Autism Evaluations

Consider an evaluation if your child shows persistent patterns of challenging behaviors or difficulties in social relationships that impact their daily functioning. This might include oppositional or defiant behaviors, difficulty with behavioral flexibility, brief episodes of impulsive, aggressive behavior that seem disproportionate to the situation, social communication and interaction challenges, difficulties with transitions, odd repetitive behaviors, or sensory sensitivities that are affecting daily functioning.

Since social, emotional, and behavioral symptoms frequently co-occur with learning differences like ADHD and dyslexia, a neuropsychological evaluation can help determine if neurodiversity is contributing to the behavioral challenges. Our comprehensive evaluations use a data-driven approach to identify the root causes while celebrating your child’s unique strengths alongside areas for growth.

Yes, we can provide an accurate assessment even when behaviors occur primarily in one setting. In fact, many children with oppositional defiant disorder only demonstrate emotional dysregulation and oppositional behaviors in the home/family setting. Our comprehensive evaluation includes standardized assessments that allow us to compare your child’s functioning to that of other children their age, regardless of where the challenging behaviors typically occur.

We also gather detailed information from other sources to understand your child’s functioning fully. Behavior observations and standardized assessments help us identify patterns and underlying factors that may contribute to location-specific behaviors.

Yes, we can diagnose autism spectrum disorder. If you are concerned that your child may have autism, please notify our team when scheduling your evaluation, and we can include autism screening as part of the comprehensive assessment.

Autism can manifest in various ways, from subtle to more obvious. If our evaluation results provide clear indicators, we can diagnose or rule out autism during your assessment. For more complex or subtle presentations where additional specialized evaluation may be beneficial, we will refer you to an autism specialist for further assessment.

Autism spectrum disorder involves a specific pattern of difficulties with social communication and interaction, sensory processing, and behavioral flexibility that differs from other social communication disorders. While both may involve struggles with social interaction skills, autism typically includes additional features such as repetitive behaviors, intense interests, sensory sensitivities, and challenges with transitions or changes in routine.

Other social communication disorders primarily focus on difficulties with pragmatic language and social interaction skills without the broader pattern of behaviors seen in autism. Our evaluation can help distinguish between these conditions and determine the most appropriate support strategies for your child’s specific profile.

We understand that children with anxiety or behavioral challenges may find evaluations stressful, so we take several steps to create a comfortable experience. Our experienced team is skilled at working with children with various challenges and adapts the evaluation approach to each child’s needs. Most of our psychometrists have previous experience in working with autistic children, or children with behavioral challenges. We focus on creating a supportive environment that celebrates your child’s unique strengths while gathering the information needed to provide a balanced, empowering perspective on their functioning.

To ensure we can provide thorough evaluations, we have chosen to be an out-of-network provider and do not accept insurance. Unfortunately, insurance companies impose strict limitations on how much time can be allocated to different parts of an evaluation. For complete details about potential reimbursement opportunities, please visit our Fees & Payments web page.