Back-To-School Services Checklist for Children and Teens

With school starting up again in about a month, many parents have started to begin back to school shopping. School supplies and clothing often are the items most focused on. While these items are important, many parents don’t think enough about putting services in place for their child before the school year starts, rather than waiting for issues from the last academic year to resurface. Here are a few services to consider setting up for your child if needed:

1)      Time management, organization, and study skills help: Did your child struggle with these items last year? Have you done anything over the summer to help them improve in these areas? Usually children don’t simply improve significantly in these areas without some sort of intervention. Thus, if these items are areas of difficulty for your child, consider getting them a therapist, ADHD/executive functioning coach, or academic tutor who could assist them with these items and help them to develop good habits to use throughout the school year.

2)      Trouble with bullying, emotion regulation, extreme nervousness, etc. These types of issues often don’t resolve themselves on their own.  However, in some cases they may if they were more situational and the setting in which they have occurred has been altered (i.e., switching to a new school). Thus, if nothing significant has changed over the summer, and your child had significant issues with these or similar ones last academic year, they would usually highly benefit from getting the support they need at the start of the school year to address them. An individual therapist (i.e., psychologist, social worker) would typically be the most appropriate professional to assist your child with these issues.

3)      Difficulty with handwriting, visual motor skills, etc.: Consider consulting an occupational therapist and/or optometrist to determine if specific services would help your child with their specific difficulties.

4)      Speech and language issues: A speech and language therapist could greatly assist your child with these types of difficulties.

5)      Significant academic difficulties: When significant academic difficulties are occurring, it is important to get a thorough understanding of what is causing the issue. It could be a learning disability, ADHD, anxiety, visual issue, speech issue, or other difficulty causing the academic struggles. Thus, a psychoeducational, neuropsychological, or psychological evaluation conducted by a psychologist or neuropsychologist could greatly assist your child by determining the cause of their difficulties. In addition, appropriate supports to help them improve can be identified.

If you need assistance locating professionals to assist with the above-mentioned services or other ones, there are a lot of resources available. You can always consult your child’s pediatrician. For therapists, you can look at online listings such as Psychology Today. For most professions, you can also locate professionals through state professional associations. Finally, as a resource for the DC area, and also to illustrate the variety of professionals available to help children and teens, here is a link to a network of professionals who help children and teens in a variety of ways: http://www.collaborativeresourcenetwork.com/

I hope that these suggestions are useful in evaluating your child’s back-to-school needs. 

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Dr. Carey Heller is a licensed psychologist with The Heller Psychology Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland. He specializes in work with children, adolescents, and families, and is happy to answer questions and provide consultations for individuals who are considering pursuing treatment, an evaluation, or other services for their child, adolescent, or themselves. Dr. Heller can be reached at (301)-385-2610 or careyheller@thehellerpsychologygroup.com.

*Disclaimer: The previous information is intended as general guidance based on my professional opinion, does not constitute an established professional relationship,  and should not replace the recommendations of a psychologist or other licensed professional with whom you initiate or maintain a professional relationship*