This past year has been unprecedented with COVID-19 impacting the entire world in every aspect, including school closures for many students across the U.S. Learning, social-emotional, and interpersonal skills have been impacted, but especially challenging on those students who have learning and behavioral deficits.  With many parents not knowing how to provide and/or support their child’s needs or how to handle behavioral challenges have created frustrated parents as well as teachers during this pandemic. One of the most important things to remember to help minimize this frustration is through communication. People can sometimes underestimate the importance of communication. 

Communication between teachers, parents, providers as well as other stakeholders ensures that everyone is on the same page. It is important to understand your child’s deficits, whether it’s learning or behavioral or both. Therefore, being a part of the process in identifying the deficits and implementing specific evidence base interventions, accommodations, and determine what type of assessments are needed can provide insight that will lead to educational achievement. 

Harris & Associates Psychological Services can assist with this process in terms of educating, supporting and consulting with parents and school staff along the process of indentifying that a disability may exist. This may be followed up with testing or screening options, determination of specialized services, implementation of individualized interventions and accommodations to promote academic success.