Autism: At Brain Learning, it’s simple, we think outside the box. We don’t believe that an individual with autism deserves the same assessment as another individual with autism. Therefore, when we assess a child with autism we develop a unique assessment plan tailored to consider the child’s strengths as well as ensuring that the referral questions are answered. It’s not “one size fits all” when it comes to assessment.  Because the effects of ASD can be far reaching in a child’s life, a comprehensive evaluation is essential.

Many children with ASD continue to be misunderstood by teachers and peers. Often when children with ASD don’t have adequate language skills, their communication is misunderstood. At Brain Learning we believe in assessing areas such as communication, social cognition, executive functioning, and adaptive skills. In our assessments we help provide a pathway of supports and services that will allow the student to become independent and self-sufficient to the degree possible. Because the depression rates significantly increase for students with ASD after they graduate high school, efforts to help create independent life skills are critical.

How to sight it:  Autism varies widely in severity and symptoms and may go unrecognized, especially in mildly affected children or when it is masked by more debilitating disorders.. Very early indicators that require evaluation by an expert include:

• no babbling or pointing by age 1
• no single words by 16 months or two-word phrases by age 2
• no response to name
• loss of language or social skills
• poor eye contact
• excessive lining up of toys or objects
• no smiling or social responsiveness.
• trouble making friends and socializing in general.

What we can do to help: We will thoroughly evaluate your child using a gold standard approach. We conduct ecological observations to evaluate the environments your child interacts with. After the evaluation, we recommend evidence based programing unique to your child.