Appointment with psychology team for psychological assessment - what to expect

[MellowMarshmallow]

Had an initial appointment with a nurse a year ago. Nothing more since then. Now have appointment for psychological assessment with an unnamed member of the psychology team.

Can anyone shed any light on what that will involve. The first appointment was awful. We had been told we were seeing an anxiety specialist after a phone consultation with a nurse. At the appointment we saw another nurse, and it was just information gathering.

Getting nervous already and it's 4 days away.

I would love to tell you it won't be just more information gathering but in all likelihood that's what it will be. Never mind they have a fat file in front of them they will still expect you to go over it all again. The difference is at the end of the appointment they may discuss medication or CBT type stuff.

I don't mind going over the information again, it's just nothing ever seems to come of it.

I was in two minds whether to go ahead with it. On the outside he is functioning really well, but on the inside I still think he's a bit of a stressed out mess. He talks about being broken, not being right for this world, feeling different from everybody else and that he hates school. He has always hated school, but now it's a pretty good school and the other children seem happy, so I am running out of ideas now. He tells me a lot that he is just so sad and that he worries about running out of time. He is very angry about time and that it just keeps going, and you can't just make more of it.

I'd made peace with the idea of dealing with this ourselves and that he is just a normal boy. I don't know whether this is a lifeline or a storm come to rock the boat.

Sorry, don't have anyone in RL really I can talk to about this so just mumbling on here.

One thing we did which I highly recommend is to go to the appointment minus child so you can discuss what help if any they can give without stressing them unnecessarily if you decide not to go that route. A shame I didn't learn to do this earlier in the process.

It's for a psychological assessment though - won't they be expecting him?

You could ring up and ask. We did because we knew ds2 would be very distressed by going and actually had postponed the appointment once because we did not know if it was worth putting him (and us) through it. I guess we had the advantage that we had gone through a very similar appointment for his brother so knew it was going to be loads of information gathering rather than much direct assessment (not much you can do if child alternates between hiding behind chair and making escape attempts). It was only when we had decided to try medication that we took ds2 as obviously he had to be seen at this point.

My sons assessment is in the morning. It's been nearly 4 5 months since the school referred my ds again. I have filed out forms of information, so has his school and I have also done a home report of everything since he was born so that I remember everything. I also have the senco coordinator from his school coming with me. His school has been nothing but brilliant and helpful. Will let you know how it goes if you would like me to xx