Child Counseling Options

What are the hidden realities of child or adolescent problems and disorders?

After conducting research and practicing in the trenches for over 20 years, we want to share some “insider information” about the camouflaged realities disorders in children:

• Often, a child’s surface problems (e.g., anxiety) camouflage the root of the problem (e.g., trauma, social conflict, or depression).
• Some of the most common issues (e.g., anger) are ultimately rooted in different problems that are hidden. An example would be a child presenting anger, when the root is anxiety or depression.
• Many children or adolescents are misdiagnosed. It is very common for youth coming to my office to come in with a diagnosis that I find was superficially given. Many people experience what I call a “drive-by” evaluation.
• Many problems significantly impairing a child or adolescent do not fall into a specific diagnostic category.

How we go beyond generic diagnosis?

Many clinicians narrowly focus on diagnosis and forget that a child’s emotional, behavioral or social issues are individualized to their unique personality. Using our unique, personality-driven assessment model, we focus on helping the child and their parents clearly and confidently grasp exactly how the psychological issues are affecting them. Additionally, we make sure the child and their parents understand what family strengths, and what personality strengths of the child can be used to combat the psychological issues so they can be conquered. Read Dr. Brunner’s blog: Great psychological assessment goes far beyond diagnosis.

Evidence of expertise: Dr. Brunner has worked closely with many fellow child experts over the last 20 years, Including pediatricians, tutors, speech and language pathologists, teachers, and coaches. He is also recognized expert among child focused attorneys. He is highly regarded by school districts and pediatricians around Tucson and beyond.

How do we assess for child and adolescent problems?

Very methodically and carefully. Too many healthcare practices make you feel like you are on a conveyor belt, where you receive what I call a “drive-by” evaluation. Read Dr. Brunner’s blog, “2 key reasons parents are unhappy with their child’s emotional or behavioral evaluation”. We offer you the opposite experience. For example, we build into our assessment system numerous checks and balances to ensure our ultimate diagnosis is accurate. After having evaluated over a thousand people in the last 20 years, we know there is an incredible amount of misdiagnosis. Read my blogs below to understand this further.

What are the elements of our assessment process?

1. Methodically gathering historical information the following categories: family history, birth, development, medical, neurological, educational, learning, emotional, behavioral, social, and academic or work performance.

2. Asking you to create a chronological timeline of important events to ensure we understand the life of the person being evaluated as a series of different stages. This is critical to get a nuanced, in-depth understanding for the person we are evaluating.

3. Reviewing this information together during the intake appointment, and beginning to develop hypotheses that we will scientifically review by collecting data.

4. Interviewing the people who have the most intimate knowledge of the day-to-day functioning of the person being evaluated. Unlike practitioners who only collect information from the person being evaluated, or only their parents, we believe that collecting this additional perspectives is vital to establishing a confident and credible diagnosis.

5. Choosing a tailored group of measurements that include self-report questionnaires, intelligence or cognitive tests, and personality measures that identify your child’s predominating characteristics.

6. Rigorously testing different hypotheses designed to play devils advocate to test our perception of the situation, and following up with questions to either the person being evaluated or those who know the person best.

7. Writing a report tailored to the exact needs of the situation. We specialize in customizing your report to address different situations, such as the need for workplace or educational accommodations.

8. Conducting a feedback meeting in our conference room where we use a dry erase board to visually show you the important factors causing your child’s problems. We call this our cognitive map, and it serves as a user-friendly roadmap. You can take a picture of and always have your child’s roadmap with you for guidance.

9. During the feedback meeting, we clarify the diagnostic conditions at play, the non-diagnostic but critical factors contributing to problems, and give you bullet-point, user-friendly recommendations, organized into thematic groups. We clarify what professionals can best serve you and your child, and save you the most money and time.

10. After this feedback meeting, we follow-up with you to make sure that our work has met your expectations, and/or to provide further consultations to make sure our work is resulting in the life changes you are seeking.

Worried your child will feel “analyzed”, “tested”, stressed out or will be misdiagnosed?

It can sound scary for parents to think about having their child go through psychological assessment. Parents may wonder, “Will my child feel they are being “tested”, “analyzed”’, or “Will this stress them out?”

When children and adolescents walk out of my office, they most often feel their time with me was fun, and they understand everything we do is focused on making their life easier, on helping them reach their potential. My goal is to help your child feel more in control of themselves, so they can reach their True Potential. I use assessment tools that help your child’s inner – and often hidden – thoughts and feelings come out, and they feel less stress.

I never tell a child they are being tested! On the contrary, I consider this assessment process to be “evaluation”, not “testing”. No “grades” are given, and children are never made to feel as if they are being critically evaluated. What I do is measure critical aspects of the child’s functioning that relate to the problem. After the critical aspects of the problem are measured, I sit down with parents and go over the results. I will often use my dry erase board in order to draw a map of how all the important variables relate to each other. That way, parents have a visual map of the problem, and often feel very relieved to find out there are solutions. Often the children I work with are so comfortable in our office that parents will end up wanting me to also have a separate meeting with the child to go over the results in a very easy-going and supportive manner, so the child can realize that the problems they are having are solvable.

My process with child and adolescent assessment is to first ensure that I have a very strong rapport with the child so they feel very comfortable. At the beginning of the intake, before even meeting with the parents, I walk the child back to my office and I ask them what they would like to get out of the process. I also talk to them about how they feel about being in my office. I show each child that I am focused on making sure they get what they need so they feel in control of their life and destiny. My style is to be down to earth, accepting, and nonjudgmental.

I always ask a child or adolescent to make a list of the problems or questions they want to get answered by my process. Children and adolescents are not used to having people ask them for this type of thing, and this is one of many techniques I use to ensure the child feels completely comfortable in my office. All of their questions are answered before we begin this assessment process. Often, I will use this time to allow the child to feel like they can ask questions about my background so they feel like I am a real person, just like them! We talk about whatever they are interested in, whether it is sports, their favorite video game, their favorite pet, or what they are currently doing that they are most enjoying.

Since I also do quite a bit of gifted assessment, I’m very good at helping a child perform at their very best on any measures of intellectual or cognitive functioning. We will take breaks whenever the child wants to, and often these short breaks can involve something fun so the child feels like their time with me is relaxed.

Parents should also know that we are happy to write a doctor’s note to avoid their child having an unexcused absence. My ultimate goal is always to have the child walk out of my office thinking that I truly care about them, and that even if some of the tasks they did with me were challenging, I made it as fun as possible. Many children report they even learned something during the process.