Is your child struggling to focus and pay attention at school? Maybe they are delayed in learning to read, and their teacher has suggested they could have symptoms of ADD/ADHD or Dyslexia.
As a result you might be asking yourself “Does my child need a diagnosis?”
The short answer is “Not necessarily”. You do not need a diagnosis to see a Counsellor or Psychotherapist.
Put simply, a diagnosis is a collection of symptoms that fall into a particular category. This is usually aligned with the medical model, and can be used to help your child to receive specialised medical support. However, you might like to weigh up your options before seeking help.
Can a Diagnosis of ADHD or Dyslexia Help?
Can a diagnosis really benefit your child? Yes, they may receive some individual classroom support and the school may receive funding for this. Your child may also be eligible to receive government funding to access specialised therapies and appropriate medication.
A diagnosis can offer peace of mind for parents. Being able to put a label onto their child’s learning and behavioural challenges can help with understanding.
Disadvantages of Having a Diagnosis
However, diagnoses can also be stigmatising, inaccurate and harmful. There is a risk of damage to self esteem, with your child taking on a belief that there is something wrong with them. A child with ADHD, for example, seeing this diagnosis as a part of them, part of their personality, blinding them to their gifts and positive attributes.
A diagnosis can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wth a focus on the symptoms of the initial diagnosis, behaviours can develop to match the label. Your child might appear to fit into their allocated “box”, matching the beliefs and expectations of that particular “label”.
Applying a diagnosis can also stop us from seeing the many fine qualities inherent in your child, blinding us to their gifts. Removing the label, it’s easier to see your child for the unique individual that they are.
For families in rural regional areas, seeking a diagnosis often involves travel to larger centres for specialist appointments. This can be expensive, and is not always easy to manage with other family and work commitments to consider.
An Alternative Perspective
However, diagnosis is not your only option, and not all parents choose to go down this path. I suggest an alternative paradigm, based on addressing the root cause, looking for what lies beneath the behaviour.
As a therapist I’m more interested in the person in front of me, than any label they may or may not carry. I see their behaviour as a symptom of something deeper. More than simply “fixing” the child, by addressing the symptoms, I see behaviour within a broader concept of healing, or moving towards wholeness.
Looking through the lens of the Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr Stephen Porges, a child’s behaviour can be viewed as a nervous system response to a perceived threat. In other words, their nervous system is reacting before their “thinking brain” has had a chance to kick in. Exploring more deeply, I usually find gaps or immaturities in early stages of sensorimotor development.
As Deb Dana, clinician, consultant, author and international lecturer said, in her book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy “Looking beyond a clinical diagnosis invites clients to see their behaviours and beliefs as adaptive responses in service of survival”.
An Holistic Approach to Healing
This holistic approach to healing recognises that all parts of a person are interconnected. Your child does not exist in isolation. They are also part of a community and their behaviour is influenced by your family story. This includes wounding from past generations that have been passed on. An holistic approach considers these wider aspects as well.
For children struggling with learning in the classroom, with signs of dyslexia and ADD/ADHD, healing involves addressing all aspects of your child. This holistic or whole child view includes social, emotional, behavioural, physical and academic learning.
Based on my experience from the last 20 years, I have found that diagnoses of dyslexia, ADD/ADHD and autism share one common thread. All have signs of disruptions to normal stages of early development. Aligned with this, I generally find trauma either in the child’s personal biography, or ancestral wounding that has been passed on through generations.
Add to this the influences of life in the twentieth century. As a result, we can see the behaviours as indications of a distressed and over-reactive nervous system, responding to perceived threats in the environment.
In other words, the child is part of their wider environment. Their behaviour is an attempt to survive in the world they have been born into. In other words, the issue is greater than your child.
Stages of Child Development
Child development happens in a specific hierarchical sequence, with each subsequent stage building on the foundations of the previous one. This means that if the lower stages are a bit “wobbly”, the following ones are likely to be a bit “wobbly” too.
Think of a tower of Jenga blocks. When the lower levels are incomplete, the tower will eventually topple. Something similar happens to children when the lower development stages are incomplete. They often “topple” as they struggle to achieve to academic expectations at school. We see this in their behaviour. When it all becomes too overwhelming, they usually act out or shutdown. These behaviours are bringing us a message.
Holistic Healing
I bring an holistic, relationship and development-based approach to supporting children and their parents. Many of these children come with diagnoses such as dyslexia, ADHD, and autism. An assessment is a good place to start, and can identify immaturities in early stages of sensory and motor development. From here we can work together to “fill in the gaps”.
Sessions incorporate a graded set of basic movement exercises designed to replicate missed stages of early development. In this way, we work at your child’s pace, addressing immaturities where necessary. Sessions may also incorporate counselling, sensorimotor development, play and art therapy.
Meeting with parents is an important part of your family’s healing process, as we work together to help your child.
The aim of therapy is to help a child to realise their potential to take their place in the world. Healing is based on acceptance of your child for who they are and what they bring to the room, recognising their gifts rather than empathising negatives. The focus is on healing, or moving towards wholeness.
Outcomes include closer family relationships, improved behaviour, reduced anxiety and depression. Children do better at school, and form more supportive friendships.
Support for a Development Movement Program in Schools
Personal conversations with classroom teachers indicate that disruptive behaviours have escalated since the bushfires and Covid lockdown in 2019/2020. They are saying that increasing numbers of children are struggling with social skills and academic learning in the classroom.
I would love to see the benefits of a generic sensorimotor development program being offered to children in schools to support their learning in all its forms – social, emotional, physical, behavioural as well as academic.
Children with delays in early stages of development often struggle to learn in a traditional classroom, many finding the volume of sensations is simply too overwhelming. As a result they can easily go into sensory overload. The behaviours we see are the response of their dysregulated nervous system.
Financial and time constraints make it difficult for many families to seek help. A school-based development movement program would bring benefits to the whole school.. They don’t need a diagnosis to access this generic support, and there is a body of research supporting in-school programs.
With so many children struggling, now is the time to create change, and if not now, when?
Conclusion
Diagnosis is useful as a way of understanding behaviour traits, and seeking financial and other supports. However, there are other options to consider before embarking on this process. This article has highlighted an alternative holistic paradigm, stepping away from the traditional medical model of labels and pathologies.
This invites the question “Is it the diagnosis that’s important, or is it how you deal with it that matters?”
The good news is that you don’t need a diagnosis or a referral to see a Counsellor or Psychotherapist.
To learn more, contact Rosalind
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About Rosalind
Since 2005 I have been helping children with learning and behavioural challenges such as autism, dyslexia, ADHD and other sensory processing difficulties. I use an holistic, or whole child approach combining counselling with a development movement program, known as The Extra Lesson. This program addresses underlying immaturities in early development that are contributing to their learning and behavioural challenges. Sessions are available online and at Moruya South Head.