what does the clinical pyschologist do?

[Saker]

My ds2 has an assessment with the clinical psychologist on Thursday. Apparently it might last 2 hours.
Can anyone give me an idea of what to expect? Do they give lots of tests e.g. colour matching, puzzles, or is it more talking? Do you think it's useful to prepare anything in advance e.g. list of problems?
I am hoping it might give us a bit more of a clue what's going on with him, but quite scared also because then it will be all down in black and white. Also it's not pleasant sitting for 2h watching your child struggle with tasks he finds difficult so I doubt it will be an enjoyable experience.

We went to see them with ds who is 8 and has autism.The appointment was about 1 1/2 hours and all talking with me giving history and concerns them listening and watching ds's response as i spoke about things,he wouldnt speak to them himself so they watched him as i spoke to see what bothered him,they were very good and he has since been on a course of play therspy for the last 2 1/2 months,we are now scheduled for another meeting with the whole team.HTH feel free to ask more.

Thanks for your help. I had sort of assumed it would be all cognitive tests and I do find that quite stressful as does ds2 - I am sure he knows he is being tested. I don't mind it taking a long time if she is going to try and get a proper picture and I have the chance to really talk through my concerns. Thanks again.

Hello Saker
Hope the appointment wenk ok. How did ds get on?

Hope it all went well, Saker.

Thanks for asking. I think it went quite well overall. We saw one lady who is a clinical psychologist and she seemed nice and also pretty experienced and to know what she was talking about. Part of the time she was formally assessing ds2 with the Griffiths test but I don?t think she completed it all because the SENCO assessed him before and so she used some of that. She also spent quite a lot of time talking to me about why I had some concerns that he might be autistic. Anyway the overall conclusion was that she didn?t think he was on the autistic spectrum - although he has one or two characteristics, the overall picture didn?t suggest that. She felt he was quite delayed in motor skills and that his motor planning was poor (which we knew.) She also felt his language was much less delayed than his motor skills and I was pleased about this because I haven?t really seemed to be able to persuade anybody that he talks in sentences, uses plurals, tenses etc correctly. I asked her if he could be dyspraxic and she seemed to think that was possible although it?s not her job to diagnose dyspraxia so we didn?t go too far down this line. I felt ds2 acted pretty typically during the appointment and so I felt she got a good impression of what he is like generally, and he made a good attempt at most of the tasks although he couldn?t do them all, he co-operated.

Anyway sorry for such a long post. I think I can stop worrying that ds2 is on the autistic spectrum (the paed also doesn?t think he is autistic but wanted the clinical pyschol. to check it out). But as far as any other diagnosis, I?m not sure we will get that yet. But I?m learning to live without and I feel ds2 is progressing well at the moment. He walked all the way from the car park to the appt holding my hand and is generally behaving more grown up. Although after the appt we went to pick up ds1 from a friend?s who has a daughter a similar age and his delays are still very obvious if you compare him with another child. It also upsets me a bit that other children are starting to notice. This friends daughter kept talking to him like a baby and wanted to watch him have his nappy changed etc, asking why he couldn?t walk down the stairs etc. But I guess we?ve got to get used to that. Anyway sorry far too long, will shut up now. Thanks a lot for asking.