Anyone send their DC to a psychologist because of concerns with behavior please come in...

I have had some concerns about ds and his behavior going on 2 years now but his behavior has progressively gotten worse.
He is a very anxious, shy, very emotional among several other things.
I brought this up to his pediatrician several times and she finally suggested speaking to someone about his begavior and if it is something we should be concerned about.
So we have a consultation on Wed with a group in smithtown and I'm just curious for other people's experiences with this and could tell me what to expect.

Re: Anyone send their DC to a psychologist because of concerns with behavior please come in...

We took my DD to a psychologist (Nassau south shore) due to severe anxiety/self esteem issues. She used to cry all the time and would really freak out over changes, even going to a special or learning something new at her pre-school would set her off. The summer before Kindergarten started she rubbed half of her eyebrow off in her sleep she was so anxious.

Therapy worked for us. We went for a year, at first it was weekly, and then as she responded to treatment it moved to every 3 weeks, every 2 weeks, once per month and then we finally stopped going.

IMO you get out of it what you put in. They gave us a lot of things to try at home and most of them really helped. For her it was a lot of self-affirmations to help with her esteem, as well as making a big deal of the mistakes DH & I made at home and showing how it wasn't a big deal, nothing bad happened. Her teacher was involved too, and worked with the therapist to try some things in the classroom to get her comfortable with change at school.

At the sessions the therapist would talk to DD about school and then they'd talk to me (in front of her) about different tactics to try, things that came up from her teacher that DD didn't bring up on her own, etc.

She still gets anxious about change, like the start of the school year, but at parent teacher conf. this year her teacher told me that DD will still get upset when a new topic is introduced, but that she can see DD calming herself down and stopping crying pretty much immediately on her own. She also said that DD likes to joke around with her teacher, which if you knew how shy and quiet she was at 2 you'd understand just how big a deal it is for her.

We're still working with her teacher on getting her to remain calm for tests, and am considering taking her back over the summer since next year she'll start taking the state standardized tests and I know she's going to really be nervous about those.

HTH! Feel free to FM if you have any other questions. Good luck!

Re: Anyone send their DC to a psychologist because of concerns with behavior please come in...

DS just turned 3 and has me concerned bc he is so shy. He barely talks in school. Doesn't talk to other kids. If he thinks someone is watching him he won't engage in a task. Yet this is a child who is very bright, has amazing verbal skills and who talks all day long at home, plays appropriately and his play is social and is generally a lot of fun at home.

We've decided that we are done sitting back, hoping he'll outgrow it and will be seeing a child psychologist. Looking at January as I need to get some recommendations 1st.

Don't know how old your DS is but when they are very young, most of the work is actually done by the parents. You'll be instructed in techniques and exercises to try to hopefully address the issues at play. Good luck with everything. It's so hard when they are little and you don't know exactly how to help them.

Anyone send their DC to a psychologist because of concerns with behavior please come in...

We went to one a year or so ago with the same issues. To me it was a complete waste. The kids are too young to get direct therapy so they basically give the parents techniques to use. Because DD is on the spectrum we already were using the techniques and the doctors told us nothing we already didn't know. For us it was not worth me paying the money to hear the same thing I was getting from DD regular teachers. Then they offered medication and that put a bad tastes in my mouth so we stopped going. And happily as she's getting older she is outgrowing some of the issues we had the concerns with initially.