5 Steps to Deciphering Your Child's Autism Evaluation
Do you feel like you need a secret decoder ring in order to understand your child’s autism evaluation report? Evaluation reports are often filled with jargon and fancy lingo. The autism criteria itself is confusing and subjective. What is social reciprocity? What criteria was used to judge my child’s language in the impaired range? What’s “typical” and what should my child be doing? Questions like “I thought they were advanced because they can read but now they are diagnosed with hyperlexia…. What is that?” Or, “I’m not sure what a restricted interest is? “
These are fantastic questions and educating yourself on the core symptoms of autism is the first step in truly understanding how autism impacts your child. Autism manifests in unique ways for every single person with that diagnosis. Sure, there are some similarities but there are also many differences. Understanding your child’s unique “flavor” of autism is the cornerstone in building a comprehensive autism plan to address their unique needs.
Here are the 5 steps to getting clarity on how autism impacts your child:
Reread the report and look for areas of strengths and weaknesses
Write down strengths and needs
Highlight any questions you have about the evaluation and get them answered
Prioritize the recommendations and choose the top 1-2 that need to be addressed
Create your action plan by figuring out what you need to do in order to implement the priority recommendations you identified.
The first step is to get out any evaluation reports that you have so far and reread them. Yes, I know they are dry and probably lengthy. But, I want you to highlight or make notes of any identified areas of weakness. For example, do they not make eye contact? Don’t point or imitate. Maybe they only say single words and don’t use words in context to the situation. Create a list of needs from the reports. And, while you're at it, also highlight any questions you have about terms that don’t make sense. Keep in mind that a diagnostic evaluation is looking for evidence of impairments as related to the autism diagnostic criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which is literally “the book” for diagnosing developmental, psychiatric, and mental health conditions. Since there is no one test for autism an evaluation is typically conducted through a combination of observation, testing, rating scales, developmental history, and input from parents or other people who know the child well.
It’s also just as important to look at your child’s strengths within the report. These may be relative strengths as compared to their overall profile but they will be important pieces of information in formulating a customized plan for your child. Sometimes it’s easy to miss or downplay strengths because of the tendency to focus on areas of need. So don’t let that happen! We need to capitalize on a child’s strengths and interests and leverage those areas to address skills that need to be taught. In general, the report should outline your child’s communication skills, social reciprocity, and any areas of restricted behavior. You want to make sure you are looking at all 3 of these areas. This is also a great time to start a binder or file with all of your child’s medical, evaluation, and school information so that you know where everything is and can easily access it. Trust me, you will undoubtedly need it again in the future!
Now that you have a clearer picture of your child’s unique profile, I want you to look at the recommendations and circle the top 1-3 that seem to be the most important in addressing your child’s immediate needs. This might feel hard because you may think they are all important but I want you to make some decisions about which ones seem most likely to address the biggest needs. It might help to think about priority concerns. These might be unsafe behaviors or that your child doesn’t currently have any functional communication. We want to start with the “big ticket” items and get interventions in place for those first. Then, you can go back and focus on the next important recommendations. Please don’t try to focus on everything at once! This will quickly lead to overwhelm.
Finally, chunk the priority recommendations you chose into small actionable steps. Maybe you need to call your insurance company, look into ABA clinics in your area, or request an evaluation for special education services. Reduce overwhelm by breaking the recommendations down into smaller steps and then schedule those into your “to do” list. Using this process will give you clarity on your child’s needs and start the ball rolling with getting them interventions and services tailored to them. A comprehensive autism plan is about strategically figuring out what services are going to really move the needle on improving your child’s life and systematically putting them in place.
Remember to stop and celebrate getting this far and check out my free resource to help you implement this process. Still confused or want more information so you feel confident that you understand your child’s autism? Schedule a free call today… I’d love to chat with you.
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