Will a first educational therapy session give my child a diagnosis?

No. Educational therapists do not diagnose and do not administer cognitive, intelligence or psychological tests unless separately qualified to do so. A diagnosis comes from a licensed neuropsychologist or a clinical psychologist specialising in learning.

What should I bring to a first educational therapy session?

Any neuropsychological or psychoeducational evaluation however old, any IEP or 504 plan current or lapsed, recent report cards, two or three samples of ordinary schoolwork including something that went badly, relevant school email threads, and a short list of what has already been tried.

Can my child fail the first session?

No. The short tasks in session one establish a baseline the therapist can measure against later. A low score on day one is what makes progress visible months afterwards.

How long does a course of educational therapy take?

Nobody publishes a typical duration, and a confident quote is a guess. What you should expect instead is a stated review date and evidence at that date.

What is educational therapy?

Educational therapy takes place within specialized, one-on-one sessions tailored to the specific academic needs of the individual student. Various methods are used to optimize the student's strengths so that they may be used to fortify weaknesses. Because many students need concepts broken into manageable chunks, the educational therapist approaches sessions with methodical organization and structure. Educational therapy also teaches compensatory strategies that allow the student to experience success in the classroom and beyond, and can improve underlying processing skills so that learning new material is easier.

How is educational therapy different from tutoring?

Educational therapy addresses underlying learning skills such as visual and auditory processing, attention and focus, and memory. Academic skills such as reading and writing are remediated by teaching the strategies necessary to read, write, calculate and problem solve. An educational therapist has completed graduate and often post-graduate training in working with all types of learners. Tutoring, by contrast, focuses on re-teaching academic subject matter and helping with homework, and a tutor can be anyone proficient in the subject at hand.

Who needs educational therapy?

When a child continues to struggle despite parent-teacher interventions or private academic tutoring, they should be evaluated for underlying learning deficits by a licensed neuropsychologist or clinical psychologist who specializes in learning issues. Children do not outgrow learning problems, and it is important to begin intervention as early as possible to mitigate and potentially prevent self-esteem problems and unnecessary daily stress.

How long are educational therapy sessions and how often should they happen?

Sessions are one-on-one and run 50 minutes, with the educational therapist and student working intensively together. A minimum of two sessions per week is recommended, though each student's plan is discussed on a case-by-case basis during the intake session.

What learning differences do you work with?

Our network of independent professionals brings extensive experience with ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, language-based learning differences, processing weaknesses and anxiety, helping students identify and develop their strengths.

Which areas of Los Angeles do you serve, and can sessions be virtual?

We serve Calabasas, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Sherman Oaks, Encino, the South Bay, Los Angeles and surrounding areas. Sessions are available in-office, in-home, in-school, in the community, in college settings, or virtually.

How are students matched with a specialist?

We assess each student's needs, learning preferences and personality, then refer them to the right specialist - a qualified educational therapist, learning specialist or executive functioning coach - rather than assigning whoever is available.

What Happens in a First Educational Therapy Session

Andrea Chernin
Aug 4
5 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

A parent and child sitting together at a kitchen table, talking over schoolwork.

By the time most families book a first educational therapy session, it has already been a long year.

Someone has told you it is a focus problem. Someone else has said it is motivation. A third person suggested waiting to see how next year goes. None of them quite agreed with each other, and you are the one who has to decide what to do next.

So here is what this particular appointment actually is, and what it is not.

Session one is where the therapist finds a starting point. Somewhere real, written down, that can be measured again in March and compared. It is not a diagnosis. It is not a first lesson.

It is not a test your child can fail. It is somebody finding out where to begin.

Before it starts: the agreement

Before anyone works with your child, you should have the terms in front of you in writing.

The Association of Educational Therapists requires that the conditions of a contract be stated, described and presented before services begin, not afterwards. That covers fees and policies. It also covers informed consent for the devices and communication technologies a practitioner uses to gather, manage and store information about your child.

If nothing has been put in front of you by the time the first session starts, it is entirely fair to ask why. This is a professional requirement, not paperwork for its own sake.

What to bring

Bring more than you think is relevant. A first session runs on evidence, and most of the useful evidence is already sitting in a drawer at your house.

Any neuropsychological or psychoeducational evaluation, however old it is
Any IEP or 504 plan, current or lapsed
Recent report cards
Two or three samples of ordinary schoolwork, including something that went badly
School email threads, if there has been a disagreement
A short list of what has already been tried, and what happened

One counterintuitive note. The failed work sample is worth more than the good one. The good one shows the therapist that your child can do it. The failed one shows them exactly where the process broke down, which is the thing they are actually looking for.

The screening, and why it is so short

This part often surprises parents. It goes quickly.

AET requires an initial educational assessment or screening to inform the intervention plan, and separately requires baseline data about the skills and needs of new clients. In practice that means short, low-stakes tasks: a few timed reading probes, some computation, perhaps a paragraph of writing.

They are brief by design. The convention in progress monitoring is to take about three short probes and use the middle score, because one measurement, on one day, from a child who is tired or nervous or coming down with something, tells you very little. Three one-minute reading probes fit comfortably inside a single session.

It is worth explaining this to your child beforehand, in roughly those words. Nobody is being graded. And the score that looks discouraging today is precisely the thing that will make progress visible six months from now.

What will not happen

You will not leave with a diagnosis.

Per AET's own fact sheet, educational therapists do not diagnose, do not administer cognitive, intelligence or psychological tests unless separately qualified to do so, do not practise psychotherapy, and do not prescribe medication. If a diagnosis is what you need, that is a licensed neuropsychologist or a clinical psychologist who specialises in learning.

There will also not be much teaching, and that is correct. Some therapists finish session one with a small deliberate win, so your child leaves having done something rather than only having been measured. But the hour is mostly information gathering, and information gathering is what it is for.

Your half of the conversation

Expect questions that feel oddly specific. What a bad evening actually looks like. How long homework really takes, start to finish, including the negotiating. What the school has said. What has been tried. What you are hoping changes.

Be concrete, even when it is unflattering. Three hours on twenty minutes of maths, four nights a week, is something a practitioner can work with. Struggles with focus is not.

Goals are meant to be developed in cooperation with the family rather than handed down. So if what you want is for your child to stop crying about school on Sunday nights, say so. That is a legitimate goal, and it can be worked toward alongside the academic ones.

Expect plain language back, too. AET requires practitioners to communicate effectively with parents and guardians, avoiding or interpreting technical terminology and using the primary language of the home. If you are handed a measurement term without a translation, ask for one. That is the therapist's obligation, not a gap in your knowledge.

What you should have by the end

Not necessarily on the day itself, but within a short and clearly stated period:

The baseline scores, with the date and the measure used
What will be monitored, and how often
The goal, or the method for setting it and when that will happen
The rule the therapist will use to decide the approach is not working
A date when all of it gets reviewed

That fourth item is the one families almost never ask for and most need. A practitioner who has decided in advance what result would make them change course is running a defined piece of work. One who has not can carry on indefinitely without anybody ever establishing whether it is helping.

On goals specifically, not yet is a perfectly good answer. Some goal-setting methods can be applied as soon as a baseline exists. One common framework requires six to nine data points before a goal can be set at all. A therapist who tells you the goal is pending, names the method and gives you a date is being precise rather than evasive.

What comes after

Sessions are one-to-one and usually run about fifty minutes. Twice a week is the commonly recommended minimum for this kind of intensive work, though the schedule is set case by case at intake, based on what the screening actually found. For students with persistent difficulties, progress monitoring is generally weekly.

One honest note about timelines. Nobody publishes a typical duration for a course of educational therapy, and anyone who quotes you one with confidence is guessing. What you can reasonably expect instead is a review date, and evidence at that date.

Judge the work on whether the numbers move. Not on how long it has been going.