How do I know when my child should be tested for a behavioral disorder?
When it comes to behavioral disorders and children, we usually find out about them because children go to school and they don't look like all the other children. They can't sit in their seat. They can't focus. Here we have very bright and intelligent kids who can't make it through their class work and so we recognize there might be a behavioral disorder. On the spectrum where there is Asperger’s to Autism, the first thing that parents need to do is get an appropriate assessment by a professional that knows what they're doing. When parents do that, then they can recognize is it what exactly is going on and what disorder they are dealing with. There is a number of other behavioral disorders that can be there whether it's conduct disorder, oppositional defiance disorder or something else. There are lots of different things. A good assessment is so extremely important to know what the next step is.
