The first steps after getting your report

Okay, great. You’ve understood what’s in the psychological report, come to terms with the diagnosis, and now you are prepping for the next steps. 

What are those, exactly?

Depending on the diagnosis (and how much is it affecting your day to day life), there are several things that might happen next. I’m going to lay out a lot of the options below, but this in no way is a complete list and hopefully your psychologist has laid out a good path for you as well. 

 

1. Reach out to your school's disability services. This is a great first step, as they can guide you into what the accommodations can and cannot look like at that particular school, and are usually very up to date on any new options that may be able to help your kid. They will help coordinate conversations with teachers and/or professors. Additionally, for some people, they may not need accommodations in every single part of their academic lives. The disability services office (may be called different things for different schools) can help your student identify where they need more support (could just be one class, could be all of them), and where they are doing okay at the current moment. 

This is also great practice for university advocacy. I’ll expand on this more in a future article, but know that in college the role of advocacy will change from parents/school system (IDEA/504 plans) to the student (ADAA). This is a legal shift, and so it’s really important to help scaffold the skills to help navigate this change for your kid. One skill to practice now is to help them articulate what their “functional impairment” is, rather than their diagnosis. Most teachers and/or professors don’t know what the diagnosis actually looks like in practice, so it’s important to focus on how it impacts your kid in the class (e.g. I need a notetaker because my auditory processing speed is slower than the lecture pace, causing me to miss key content). 

I’ve got some scripts for what say to the professor and disability services office coming soon!

REMEMBER: Utilizing accommodations isn’t “cheating” or “taking a shortcut”. They can be critical tools to show your kid’s underlying true ability. I can go on a major soapbox on this topic, but suffice it to say that the classroom isn’t designed for every learner. It’s important for you or your kid to use this as a professional strategy. 

2. Figure out if you need medication. This won’t apply for everyone and every diagnosis, but if the psychologist has recommended looking into it, this is a process you’ll want to start sooner rather than later. Some psychiatrists have long wait times, so making that appointment could be helpful. For ADHD meds, they may need your report. Some family doctors can also prescribe with a psychological report, but it’s up to your practitioner. 

3. Try other supports. There are other ways of supporting learning disability and ADHD diagnoses, in addition to the accommodations and medication mentioned above. This may include educational therapists, occupational therapists, and mental health therapists. Again, hopefully the psychologist has recommended some individuals locally, as well as which types of support may be most helpful. 

4. What can you do at home? This is often a gap that I see in reports. Usually there are school accommodations, sometimes there are personal recommendations. Hopefully they also include family recommendations. These can include books/articles/podcasts, systems-level changes (organization systems, calendar usage, etc), and connecting with local educational supports. One of my absolute favorite resources in this area is CHADD and NAMI. 

Parents, one thing for you to consider is how to make this a gradual transition from executive assistant to consultant. I usually offer two potential ways to do this, and they can go hand in hand based on what your kid needs. 

A. The “hand-off” method. Detail and hand off one responsibility at a time. E.g. Calendar management, medication management, having the conversation with the disability services office. Do each one until they have a good handle on it.

B. Strengthen the system rule. Instead of focusing on whether or not the task got done, think about the system that underpins it instead. With ADHD, you typically want to think about environmental changes using concrete, low-friction methods. This can be forms of externalizing working memory (think using whiteboards, calendars everywhere, and key/wallet drop places), as well as helping with motivation/task initiation (body doubling - working alongside a friend, task batching, etc).

5. Identifying your own triggers. This is for the kids with ADHD. What makes your attention and/or hyperactivity better and worse? Think about monitoring sleep, exercise, food, caffeine, screen use, and difficulty of classes. You may find some surprising patterns!

6. Playing with some technological supports. There are some wonderful tools that can help with reading, writing, and math out there. Try some out, see what works best for you!

            a. However, don’t try all of the apps all at once. Find one good calendar first, then              one good task manager, then maybe one good dictation app, and so on. 

            b. If you find a good digital (or physical) calendar, that’s going to be a lifesaver,                  especially for kids with ADHD. Help them: make sure every class, appointment,                  gym, sleep, etc is on it, use alerts/recurring events on digital calendars well, and                color coding systems to mark different time blocks.

            c. For learning disabilities, college usually marks a drastic increase in the amount              of reading that is required. Helping your kid identify technologies that assist with                speed and comprehension (text to speech, Speechify, things like that).

 

This report is simply a stepping stone onto the next phase. This is a great time for your teen to learn the completely necessary skill of figuring out what works best for them as an individual, and how to assess and implement this. Their needs will probably change during college, graduate school, and beyond. 

If you’re in the transition period between high school and college and want more support beyond this phase, check out my full guide to the summer before college. If you don’t need that full guide but want some extra tips, check out my free top tips. 

Have any tips that have worked really well? Want me to do a deep dive on a different topic? Place your comment below!