Find The Right Assessment For Your Child

Get insight into your child's strengths and needs so you can learn how to best support them.

Assessments Can Help You:

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understand your child's learning profile
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receive a specific diagnosis, if applicable
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get strategies to help your child in school and at home

When you want your child to succeed emotionally, socially, and academically but they:

  • Are having a tough time at school or at home.
  • Find it hard to focus, behave, or get along with peers.
  • Are learning faster than others and isn’t feeling challenged.

An assessment can help your child get the support they need.

Assessments in Edmonton

Assessments we offer

Formal assessments are valuable tools to help understand how kids, teens, and adults learn, think, understand, pay attention, and handle their feelings. Assessments involve several different types of tests and observations that give us a detailed understanding of the person.

Gifted Assessments

Gifted assessments are designed to identify exceptional intellectual capabilities and talents in children and adolescents. These evaluations provide a comprehensive view of a child’s cognitive abilities, such as logical reasoning, problem-solving, memory, and processing skills. The findings help to support your child so that they are more adequately challenged in their educational environment and can help them gain access to extended learning opportunities. We use a variety of standardized tests, including intelligence and academic assessments, to gain an in-depth understanding of a child’s unique strengths and potential.

ADHD Assessments

ADHD is not diagnosed based on a single test or checklist. Instead, a combination of these methods is used to form a comprehensive understanding of your child’s unique behaviours and challenges, ensuring an accurate and complete diagnosis if relevant. The process of an ADHD assessment uses a range of methods to gather a comprehensive understanding of a child’s behaviour, academic performance, and social and emotional wellbeing. With this information, we can develop a treatment plan with behavioural strategies and lifestyle changes that are tailored to the specific needs of your child.

Sensory Assessments

A sensory assessment evaluates how a child processes the constant influx of sensory information they encounter daily. By using interviews, child observation, and standardized questionnaires, the assessment reveals how a child perceives and responds to their environment. This insight is important in understanding their reactions in various settings (school, home, or within the community), and helps us suggest tailored strategies to support the child’s needs.

Social-Emotional/ Behavioural Assessments

Social-emotional/behavioural assessments are designed to understand a child’s emotional functioning, social skills, and their ability to manage their behaviours. These evaluations can help determine how a child is functioning in areas such as anxiety, depression, social functioning, behavioural regulation, and adaptive skills (e.g., adaptability and communication). With the use of detailed interviews, observations, and standardized questionnaires, we provide a comprehensive picture of a child’s emotional health, so that we can suggest tailored intervention strategies to help you and your child move forward.

Psychoeducational (Learning) Assessments

Psychoeducational assessments help parents gain insight into their child’s academic performance as well as their general problem-solving, thinking, and processing skills. These assessments are used to uncover underlying learning differences (e.g., academic learning disorders that may be making school difficult for them). With this explanation, we can provide recommendations and strategies that fit a child’s strengths and needs, which can ultimately make learning easier and more enjoyable for them.

Adult Assessments

Adult assessments encompass a broad range of evaluations designed to identify cognitive, emotional, and behavioural difficulties or disorders in adults. These assessments can help understand various concerns, from ADHD, depression, anxiety, to cognitive impairments and specific learning disorders (e.g., dyslexia). Through interviews, standardized testing, and behavioural observations, we can develop an understanding of an individual’s challenges and strengths, guiding effective treatment, lifestyle choices, and potential workplace accommodations to boost overall quality of life.

Educational Consultation (Parent Sessions)

Are you looking for support and don’t know what exists in the community? Are you struggling to understand a previous assessment report that has been completed on your child, or where to start with the list of recommendations that have been provided? Are you looking for transition support for your adolescent (e.g., to support their transition to college and university, or adulthood)? During educational consultations, we can meet with parents, teachers, physicians, and other caregivers to provide ideas and tools to help your child learn and grow in a way that helps them thrive. These conversations can include reviewing the results of the assessment reports, suggesting changes at school, giving ideas on how to make learning more effective, and ways to handle behavioural concerns. Our aim is to help advocate and create supportive environments that work for each child.

Understanding our strengths and needs can help us feel more comfortable about who we are and lead to a brighter future.

Who We Are

Why J. Gordon Psychology Group

We believe therapy is part of living a healthy life; you don’t have to be in crisis or facing an emergency to seek support. Our practice is built on long-term connections and we walk with you as you navigate the different phases and challenges in your life.

While working with children and adolescents is what we’re best known for, we extend our specialized assessment and therapeutic support services to parents, adults, and couples who are on their own path to healing and living a life they love.

We provide therapy that is

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Strengths-based

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Compassionate

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Collaborative

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Evidence-based

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Relationship-focused

Practitioners who offer assessments

our approach

How Our Assessments Work

We gather relevant information

We interview parents and teachers to gather the background information we need to put together a comprehensive plan to best facilitate your child’s needs.

We conduct the assessment

The assessment takes 1-3 hours, over 1 or 2 sessions, depending on your child’s attention and comfort level. We use tools such as behavioural observation, standardized tests, and questionnaires to determine how your child is doing relative to same age peers.

We provide a comprehensive report

Assessment reports summarize and interpret all information collected and may include a formal diagnosis as per the DSM-5 and DC:0-5 (diagnostic criteria for ages 0-5).

Questions about assessments

You might consider an assessment for your child if they’re having a hard time at school or at home and you’re not sure why. Maybe your child is struggling with reading, math, or another subject at school, or maybe they’re finding it hard to focus or behave well. Or perhaps they’re finding it tough to get along with other kids, or they’re often feeling sad or worried. An assessment can help figure out what’s going on and how to help. Also, if your child seems to be learning a lot quicker than other kids their age, an assessment could help identify if they’re gifted. You don’t have to figure this out all by yourself. If you’re not sure, it’s a good idea to talk with a professional, like a teacher or a psychologist, about whether an assessment might be useful for your child.

This depends on the specific assessment being completed, though most of the time, an assessment will consist of a parent information gathering session, an assessment administration session with your child (1-3 hours in length), and a parent feedback session to discuss the assessment results and recommendations. If your child has difficulties with attention or regulation, we may complete the assessment administration over two sessions. These sessions will be sensitive to your child’s work pace and their need for breaks.
Once the assessment administration is complete, your Psychologist will meet again within 2-3 weeks to debrief the results. During this meeting, you will also discuss recommendations to best support your child moving forward, across home and school settings.
For learning assessments, please try to ensure that your child has had a good night’s rest, a good breakfast, and that they bring their glasses! Otherwise, they do not need to prepare for anything in advance for the assessment.
Assessments for preschool and school-aged children are what we’re best known for, though we have specialized training to complete assessments for adults as well. This includes adolescents transitioning to adulthood and needing various supports (e.g., college/university support, or PDD). We’re also happy to help adults interested in obtaining their own learning or ADHD assessment.
The results of the assessment will be used to help your child do better and feel better, both at school and at home. They can guide teachers in how to plan lessons that your child will learn from best. The results can also show if there are changes we could make at school to help your child learn better or feel more comfortable. Additionally, understanding the results can help you better communicate with your child, easing stress at home.

Assessments can help identify the following:

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What you can expect

An assessment can bring a sense of clarity by helping you understand yourself or your child better. The information provided can also help you get the support needed across home, school, and community settings. While outcomes may vary based on your unique situation, you may gain:

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How To Get Started

Send An Inquiry

If you’re looking to get started with J. Gordon Psychology Group, get in touch! You can email, call or submit a message using our contact form.

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780-938-4473

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Assessments in Edmonton

J. Gordon Psychology Group

Get the answers you need and the resources to help your child succeed