“Does anyone know where I can get my child’s learning assessed?”

This was a plea from a mother of a nine year old non-reader. She felt that a learning assessment might give her the power to get extra help for her son.

She is right, having information about why children have learning difficulties is very important in knowing how to provide the help children need. A learning assessment is an excellent way of getting information …

BUT…

there are different kinds of learning assessments depending on what you want the end result to be.

First, there is the traditional assessment conducted by an educational psychologist. This type of assessment can be requested by a parent or a teacher with concerns about a child’s progress in school. Where I live and worked there was a two to four year waiting list to get this service. Even when the child is eventually assessed the resulting report may not be very helpful. These reports are written for the school system, as a way of helping the school decide where to place the child or what extra support to give him or her – assuming that extra support is available. I have translated several such reports into ‘parent language’ for parents who had no idea what they said or how they could use them.

But, if you want the school system to provide your child with extra support this is the way yo have to go. Schools only seem to respect the reports from their appointed psychologists.

If you can’t wait in line because you think that your child needs help now, you may be able to pay for a private assessment. These can be quite expensive but you do get results pretty quickly. In my experience the quality of the report depends on the ability of the tester and I have seen some reports that are excellent and some that are pretty poor. These reports are supposed to be written in a way that is useful to parents. After all, they are the ones who are paying. So, if you decide to go this route, ask questions about the nature of the report and make sure that you tell the assessor what you want from the results. Do you want a report that you can use to try and influence your child’s school? Do you want a report that tells you why your child has problems? Do you want a report that gives you practical advice on ways that you can help your child?

Make sure that you now what you want and that the assessment will provide it.

Then there is a third type of assessment, an assessment that is specifically designed to give you the information and advice you need to help your child. This type of assessment is new, research based, and exciting. Exciting because for the first time it allows you, the parent, to get the information you need to make decisions about the best way to help your child learn.

I met many parents when I worked with children with learning issues. They asked me what they could do to help their child because they knew that the school was unable to provide the extra support their child needed. I spent a lot of time talking to them, explaining why their child was struggling to learn, and giving them some ideas about what they could do to help.

I realized that there were many parents who needed this kind of support. How could I get them the help they needed?

After several years of research and study I discovered a way to combine what I knew about why children have learning problems with how parents can help. The result is the Leading to Learning 5 Steps to Success Process.

Why am I telling you this? Because if you want a learning assessment for your child you need to be aware of the options. You need to know which type of assessment will meet your needs and those of your child.

Before you get a learning assessment ask yourself what you want to do with the results. What do you actually want to achieve? Then make your choice.