Ep. 69: Navigating Autism & ADHD Assessments Ft. Neuropsychologist Dr. Wilson
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What is the purpose of neuropsychological assessments for autistic and ADHD children?
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids.
We're an SLP couple from California with four boys.
And we're here every week to bring you neuroaffirming tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift? Let's do this!
Hello everyone and welcome to Making the Shift. We are so excited about our special guest that we have on today. We have Dr. Karen Wilson, who is a clinical neuropsychologist, which just sounds impressive. I would love to tell someone that is my title. She is also the director of West LA Neuropsychology. She hosts a podcast called Diverse Thinking, Different Learning. And she also is the founder of Child Nexus, which is an online platform that connects therapists to families. And we also were friends from years back and some women CEO groups. groups together and we're just so excited to have you here since our worlds collide so much.
Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to be here.
Yeah, I mean it's funny because as we were talking about this interview, we were like, where do we start? There's so many questions. And I feel like, I mean, just so that the audience knows, your specialty is assessment.
Right.
And I would and today I think and you assess many children for many reasons. Today we kind of want to focus more on like the realms of autism, ADHD, really big in our community. But I'm even just curious. What how does a child land in your office? Like typically what are the things that have happened so far at home or school and like what's the typical age that a child might land in your office? And what have those kind of struggles maybe looked like that ultimately led them there?
Yeah, that's a great question. It actually is a wide range. I can have parents contact me when their kids are five, sometimes even three, and I say it's too early for me, but five for sure, and then all the way up until high school. Sometimes the first assessment is high school because the academic demands have increased and a child who never struggled before is suddenly struggling. And so, you know, parents often come because Either their child is struggling at home, at school, on the playground, on the soccer field. And they don't know why. They don't know how to support them. And they wanna better understand why their child is struggling. And that's what I tell them. The you know, our purpose is not, and some parents are afraid.
to get the assessment because they don't want their child to be labeled. And I always say it's not about getting labeled. It's we want to have a better understanding of of why school is hard for your child, why making friends is hard, why they're struggling to follow directions. that their coach is giving them. And What that allows us to do is to better support your child.
Yeah, it's actually really interesting you say that because Parents go into their assessment with you knowing that that is the possible outcome. Yes. And I think that's different in speech because families will come to us thinking like I'm just giving my child the support they need. And then sometimes it leads to a road of we need more assessments and more diagnosis. And that's sometimes really hard, a really hard conversation for us to have with parents because they're not ready Right. For that. And but that's interesting because the people who come to your office, it's like they've already determined that that is
for them. They know that something is going on and they just don't know why, right? They don't have the answers. You know, and they may even have some ideas in their head and they're wondering, you know, is this anxiety? Is this an attention struggle? Is this that they're not just they're just not interested? in school. And so again, they really want to understand why. And that's the whole purpose of doing the work that I do, that my team does, is that we really want to provide parents with information. to help them better support their child at home and also educators better understand these kids because You know, part of the process and we can talk we'll talk about that is getting input from teachers.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the purpose of neuropsychological assessments for autistic and ADHD children?
0:08–6:39
2
When do parents typically bring a child to the clinic and what problems lead them there?
6:39–12:13
3
How do autism and ADHD overlap and why were they historically mis‑diagnosed?
12:13–18:52
4
What are the three main presentations of ADHD and how do they look in practice?
18:52–24:03
5
What does a comprehensive, collaborative assessment process look like?
24:03–29:03
6
How do anxiety, ADHD, and autism interact and affect treatment planning?
29:03–32:31
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)