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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
Where occupational therapy, speech and language or neuropsychology have already covered ground, do not cover it again for the sake of a complete battery. Where nothing exists, start with the question that decides which treatment begins first. Every extra task costs the child something, and it costs you the goodwill you will want later.
'and ease my task for me' (Quran 20:26). Moses asks for the load to be reduced, and a child sitting down to a battery deserves the same consideration.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Choosing a measure by what you need to know is the reasoning that produced a validated adult quality of life scale for ADHD, developed because symptom counts alone did not capture the effect on work, home and daily life. It was a measure development study rather than a comparison of testing strategies, so it illustrates matching the instrument to the question rather than proving selective testing beats a full battery.
Brod M, Johnston J, Able S, Swindle R. (2006). Validation of the adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder quality-of-life Scale (AAQoL): a disease-specific quality-of-life measure.. Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Testing aimed at a question gives you an answer, and testing aimed at completeness gives you a folder.
A clinician trained thoroughly in autism and ADHD may know almost nothing about coordination or reading difficulties, and can spend years working above foundations nobody ever checked. Ask yourself which of those categories your own training left out.
Time management is only the fit between tasks and the hours you have: planning them against time, then doing them against time. It is a skill with parts, not a verdict on what kind of person you are.
Before you decide a strategy has failed, check whether the medication underneath it is doing its job. If someone is sitting in front of you still struggling, the honest first answer is usually that it is not, quite.