Would You Like To Get Your Child Tested For Autism?

Is your child struggling to keep up with their peers socially and developmentally?

Do they have trouble adjusting to change or get upset when they can’t keep their routine?

Are you thinking about having your child take an autism evaluation?

Maybe you’ve noticed that your child has behavioral traits that differ from their peers. Perhaps they tend to play alone and don’t seem interested in other kids. When they do play with other kids, maybe they feel the need to be in charge and have things go a very particular way. Additionally, their cognitive development might be strong while their social development lags behind. Perhaps your child struggles to read social cues, hold conversations, or understand body language.

On the other hand, maybe your child’s development has looked normal for most of their life. But now that they’ve hit the teenage years, they seem like they don’t quite fit in. While all their friends are talking about their crushes, your child is occupied with interests and topics that lie outside the norm or seem to be those of younger kids.

If you’ve observed these signs in your child, you might be considering an assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). At Morning Star Psychological Services, we offer comprehensive autism testing for toddlers, school-age children, and adolescents. The assessment process can help your child get in touch with their strengths and create a roadmap for success while giving you the skills and tools to support them in daily life.

It’s Hard To Know How To Support A Child With Autism

Many parents struggle to understand their child’s development, especially when their development seems different from their siblings or other kids. Knowing the signs of autism isn’t always easy, as some cases are less obvious than others. For many kids, their social and developmental challenges are very subtle.

This is often the case with girls. Many girls with autism are good at mimicking social norms and masking their neurodivergence. They often get through elementary school with ease—they might just be regarded as a little quirky or eccentric—but then when they hit puberty, their differences may become more obvious. Girls with autism (as well as boys with mild autism) may work extraordinarily hard to fit in, carefully analyzing social situations and attempting to mask their differences. This can be exhausting and take away from other pursuits. As a result, they can end up feeling like outsiders.

Parents Often Struggle To Access Evaluation Services

So many parents who try to get an assessment have to deal with long waitlists and long wait times. This is especially true of rural areas, such as our area of New Hampshire. Here, there are regional autism centers that typically schedule evaluations for a year out. Many of these practices are also very clinical and medically oriented and don’t have a very strong emphasis on warmth and connection.

At our practice, we’re usually able to get kids in within a month to three months. Our services are also very flexible, child-centered, and family-friendly. We aim to provide an environment that’s deeply accepting and neurodiversity-affirming while still focusing on the very real challenges that kids with autism face.

Autism Testing Can Help You Understand Your Child’s Development

When it comes to autism, early intervention can significantly improve outcomes.* If your child gets a diagnosis early on, they can get better access to school support, have more eligibility for accommodations, receive additional coverage through their health insurance, and even get extra help with career planning. What’s more, a diagnostic assessment can help kids with autism increase their self-understanding and assist in their identity development. It can empower them to find their place in the world and connect with other kids who share the same strengths and challenges, allowing them to create a more fulfilling social life.

Most importantly, autism testing can help you better understand your child and their unique way of interacting with the world. You can learn how to intervene when they have meltdowns, support them when they’re struggling socially or academically, and give them the tools to regulate their emotions. This can help you improve your relationship with them and create a stronger parent-child bond for the future.

How The Autism Assessment Process Works

We strive to make the autism testing process as simple and streamlined as possible. There are four steps to the process, each of which is outlined below:

1. Intake appointment—This will be a two-hour meeting between you and your child’s clinician to discuss their challenges on an in-depth level.
2. Testing appointments—For adolescents and kids on the older side, there will generally be two three-hour sessions of neuropsychological testing. Young children often get three two-hour sessions. The timeframe for the testing appointments is very flexible, as we recognize that some families like to get the testing done in one week while others might want more time.
3. Written report—We will gather feedback from teachers, therapists, coaches, and other important figures in your child’s life. This will help us create a written report containing all the relevant information that you need to know about your child’s diagnosis. The report will generally be completed two to four weeks after the assessment process.
4. Feedback session—Once the written report is finished, we’ll talk about the results with you in a feedback session and we can discuss the best way to share the results with your child. We can then hold a feedback session with your child and, upon request, can speak with their school or other providers about the assessment results (whether the results are shared with anyone else is entirely your decision).

Ultimately, the services we provide are designed to help your child lead a happy and successful life. The challenges of autism are very real and worth addressing, but there are also immense strengths that kids with autism have, and a psychological evaluation can accurately pinpoint these. It can help your child understand their differences, play to their strengths, and find their people.

You May Have Some Questions About Autism Testing…

What if I don’t have the money for autism testing?

We provide families with a comprehensive and supportive assessment process, taking their financial concerns into account and being flexible based on their child’s needs. We generally see Morning Star Psychological Services as a kind of “concierge” assessment practice in that we spend a lot of time with each child and family so that we can offer in-depth support. Insurance simply does not pay for this kind of service, since it puts limitations on what practitioners can offer.

What if my child gets labeled because of their diagnosis?

The reality is that kids with autism often end up giving themselves their own labels and diagnoses, such as “I’m not smart” or “I don’t fit in.” The beauty of autism testing is that it can flip these negative self-beliefs on their head and help children realize, “There’s nothing wrong with me—this is just how my brain works.” What’s more, the purpose of an assessment involves so much more than just putting a name to a condition. It can provide a key to accommodation services, give you an understanding of your child’s development, help your child learn to advocate for themselves, and enable them to get in touch with autism communities.

Will my family’s decisions, beliefs, and values be questioned?

We are health-freedom oriented and always seek to respect parents’ decisions about how they approach their child’s medical care. Since we don’t take insurance, we enable parents to be fully in control of the assessment results. Parents don’t have to share the results with schools, insurance companies, or any other parties if they don’t want to.

Let Us Help You Create A Roadmap For Your Child’s Success

If you think your child might be on the autism spectrum, we encourage you to pursue an assessment at Morning Star Psychological Services so that you can get the answers you need and set your child up for success. To get started, you can use the contact page or call me at 603-810-0782 for a free 20-minute phone consultation.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/autism/treatment/accessing-services.html?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/accessing-services-for-autism-spectrum-disorder.html