Are you or your child’s teacher expressing concerns about your child’s behaviors, ability, or progress? Have you been advised to get an outside evaluation or neuro-psych evaluation?
There may be a step before spending upwards of $2k on an evaluation to establish that a child has “trouble focusing” or “gets frustrated easily”. The GDO-R looks at how a child is meeting developmental milestones. These typical growth benchmarks can determine areas to support or enhance a child’s classroom and home life by understanding the progression of development. This approach can provide insightful understandings before a diagnosis. This set of testing is available for children in nursery - age 9.
All evaluators are trained at the Gesell Institute
What is the GDO-R?
The GDO-R is an observational assessment tool for young children that can help parents, educators and other professionals understand child behavior in relation to typical growth patterns. Gesell assessments have been used as standard measures for child growth and development for over 85 years. Unlike tools that assess I.Q. or academic skills, the GDO-R measures language, cognitive development, fine and gross motor development, social-emotional and adaptive development. A trained examiner conducts this standardized procedure by observing and recording a child’s behavioral responses and comparing them with age related norms. In addition to direct responses to the various tasks, the examiner also considers the child’s processes, organization, method, overt behaviors and verbalization while engaging in the tasks in order to determine their overall developmental stage relative to their chronological age. (From the Geselle Institute, Yale University)
What is developmental observation or assessment, and why is it important?
Developmental assessment is used to determine whether a child has reached developmental milestones and can accomplish the major associated tasks. Individual children’s responses are matched with normative patterns of behavior for each age. The responses yield a description of the child’s Developmental Age in contrast to chronological age.
An important aspect of developmental observation or assessment is that it can highlight areas of concern, and administered over time, can monitor consistency among developmental domains. When developmental assessment reveals signs of difficulty, re-screening should follow after a short interval. Persistent signs of difficulty indicate the need for a referral for diagnostic assessment.
Understanding children in light of their developmental age can help to adjust expectations, inform curricula, design spaces, and establish practices that are developmentally appropriate and supportive of the natural unfolding of the growth and development process. (From the Gesell Institute, Yale University)