How to explain evaluation appointment to 8 year old

[4Marmalade]

My ds will be 8 in Nov. Next week we have an initial 2 hour consultation/evaluation to help us with some of his anxiety and behavioural issues we've been having. Due to his anxiety I don't want to say too much or give him too much advance notice. I know kind of what the appointment will be like (interview together, interview apart if going well, etc...) so I can explain that to him. I'm just not sure what to say about "why" we are going. He does know that he is having difficulty with his anxiety and that he can be too angry and emotional. I'm just struggling with finding the right words so that he does not blame himself for the upheaval in our house right now. I've offered a counsellor in the past but he insists he doesn't want to talk to anyone so I'm not sure that approach will go over well. Any advice?

[mamabohl]

when we were bringing our 8 yo in for evaluation/testing we just told him that he was going to take some tests to learn about him, to see what his strengths and weaknesses are, how smart he is, etc. It was right before school started so we kind of tied it to that...he was very excited about it. your situation is a bit different...later when ds went to meet with the psychologist after the testing I told him that some of his fears were more than "average" and we wanted to help him learn to overcome them and that talking to this guy might help. He was agreeable. I hope your evaluation goes well.

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by 4Marmalade

I've offered a counsellor in the past but he insists he doesn't want to talk to anyone so I'm not sure that approach will go over well.

Don't offer! That opens the door to say "no!"

My DD knew that her anxiety was off the charts and that she was different from other kids, so I explained that this was part of figuring out what was going on so that we (the adults in her life) could make her life work better for her. It was just about helping the adults.

My DD really enjoyed her eval. (Partly because she disliked school and the eval took a lot of time away from school. ) The eval was one-on-one, which is much easier for her than groups, and it was a doctor who was super with kids. It's different puzzles and such.

One thing I would warn him about is that some of the test just keep getting harder until you can't do them any more, so don't worry about it getting hard. It doesn't matter how well you are doing, it keeps going until it gets too hard, even if you are doing really, really well.