TPP 299: Dr. Jonine Nazar-Biesman on Navigating the Neuropsych Evaluation Process
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
41 min
2 speakers
7 chapters
transcribed 2 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What should parents know before choosing a neuropsychologist for their child?
If there's one tidbit of information I could encourage with parents, it's just to really don't shy away from that communication piece with a person who you're bringing your child to see, whether it's a therapist or your assessor, have that open communication. If you're not happy with something or you have a question about something, don't feel like you have to defer to the professional. Be honest and be open to having the process be collaborative so that you can be the good self advocate for your child that you are and were meant to be.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Rieber. And I know that the neuropsych assessment process can be incredibly daunting and complicated to navigate, especially in recent years as a result of COVID. So I'm excited to share this conversation with pediatric and adolescent. Young adult neuropsychologist, Dr. Jonin Nazar Biesman. As you'll hear, Jonin's work is about taking into consideration the whole child and looking at the big picture when assessments are being done. In this episode, we talk about what parents should think about when vetting psychologists to assess their child, the difference between a neuropsych, a psychoeducational, and a psychological assessment, and how parents can navigate getting a better assessment if they believe their child got the wrong diagnosis.
We also talked about what to do with all of that feedback that we get from a neuropsych evaluation and how that feedback can best be relayed to our kids and to their schools. And let me tell you a little bit more about Jonine before we get started. Dr. Nizar Bieseman has over 25 years of experience specializing in assessing and treating children, adolescents, and young adults with neurodevelopmental disorders. She works closely with families, treatment teams, schools, and the community to ameliorate social emotional, behavioral, and educational challenges. Jonine also specializes. In forensic neuropsychology to assess damages due to traumatic brain injury, birth insults, and environmental toxins. And now here's my conversation with Doctor Jonin Nazar Biesman.
Hey Janine, welcome to the podcast. Hi,
Debbie. Thanks so much for having me.
This is a interesting and maybe overdue conversation that we're gonna have today because it has been a couple of years, maybe even four years, since we've really explored the assessment and evaluation process. And I think there are some things that have probably changed, or I know there are questions that have come up because of COVID that my listeners will be interested in as well. But I would love, as a way to start, if you could just tell us in your own words a little bit. about the work that you do in the world. And I always love to know either your personal why for doing it or where you find the most joy in the work that you're doing.
So I'm a pediatric and adolescent young adult neuropsychologist, which means that the training goes beyond just typical clinical psychology into a couple of years of postdoc understanding brain development. Neural circuitry, how things wire up, and the why I went into that specialty is just truly fascination about the brain and how it governs and operates everything, and truly understanding things from a brain perspective, how behavior is shaped by what the brain is doing. So I think the favorite part of my day is just sitting with students. students, chatting with them, getting to know them, taking them in, really trying to capture and appreciate their individual differences during testing, with that's what I'm doing, really.
Enjoying the process of discovery, working with kids almost as a a detective to figure out the best things about their brains and how they work and how they learn and think and organize information. Probably the least favorite is all the documentation that follows after that assessment process, but I've also always taken pride and felt it's really important in doing assessment to be a practitioner, to also be a clinician, to treat, to intervene, to
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What should parents know before choosing a neuropsychologist for their child?
0:00–8:25
2
How can parents effectively vet psychologists and assessors?
8:25–15:07
3
What’s the difference between a neuropsychological, psycho‑educational, and psychological assessment?
15:07–22:47
4
How does Dr. Nazar‑Biesman adjust the evaluation process based on a child’s needs?
22:47–26:55
5
How did COVID‑19 change the way neuropsych assessments are conducted?
26:55–33:18
6
What’s the best way to share feedback from an evaluation with kids and schools?
33:18–39:11
7
How should parents use the detailed report and recommendations after a neuropsych evaluation?
39:11–41:45
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
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