The Power of a Diagnosis
Recently, I had a conversation with the parent of a young child. He had just received a neuropsychological report for his son and found out that the doctor diagnosed his son with autism. He told me that the evaluation results upset him deeply. The father explained to me that, from his point of view, autism carries a social stigma with it. He was scared that the diagnosis would cause people to pigeonhole his son and that it didn’t tell the whole story of who his son really is. I agreed with him that, of course, a child is more than just their special ed. classification, and also suggested that getting an accurate diagnosis can be very powerful — both for the child and the parents.
In my experience, those feelings of fear are very common. Parents are often frightened when their child gets a diagnosis like ADHD, autism, or dyslexia. The initial reaction can be to push back against the idea that their child is non-neurotypical.
Parents might be worried because they think their child's life is going to be harder because of the stigma attached to having special needs. The reality is that stigma is decreasing. As it's becoming more common for people to interact with friends and colleagues who have special education diagnoses, those diagnoses become more familiar to the general public. Non-neurotypical people are increasingly recognized for who they are — family, friends, and colleagues. In other words, they’re valued, successful, and respected members of society. We've seen that across the cultural landscape as a whole, especially in the last 20 years.
Another phenomenon that’s emerging is that, as societal stigma falls away, a diagnosis can be a powerfully positive thing for both parent and child. Some parents might breathe a sigh of relief once they get used to the idea that their child has a learning disability. A diagnosis can turn an ominous, scary unknown like “My child struggling and I don’t know why” into something that can be addressed. It can motivate parents to join communities of other families like theirs. At the same time, the child can use their diagnosis to form a powerful, positive part of their identity.
For many diagnoses, there are proven teaching methodologies that work. With the right educational placement at the right time in the child's life, they can get the feeling of belonging instead of feeling like an outsider, feeling vulnerable, or feeling different. No one ever becomes the "outsider" in private schools with a neurologically homogenous population of a specific type of student.
The uniqueness of each child's learning journey is valued in schools like that, and that's why we do what we do. Our firm helps parents find and pay for those types of educational placements — so that a diagnosis can turn from something scary into something that can be tackled, celebrated, or leveraged to create value for the child.
Jonathan Gottlieb
Partner
195 Montague Street
14th Floor
Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
Jonathan@GottliebFirm.com
(646) 820-8506