Posted On July 01, 2022,

Help to Navigate Options

Families need help in navigating the many educational options and alternatives available. Picking from the huge array of schools and programs can be quite daunting. Matching your child to the right school is one of life's most significant decisions.

Students Need an Advocate

Parents, as well as students, need an advocate during this application and selection process. An educational consultant is a guide during an exciting but confusing time in a student's and family's life. We help to determine the best school fit for your student, often remaining their advocate throughout their entire educational process.

Wise Choices & Wise Investments in Education

Internet websites and school marketing materials can be confusing, and at times misleading. Even a wonderful and seemingly perfect school, can be the wrong fit for your child and not meet their needs. A wrong choice can waste valuable resources.

Parents increasingly seek to invest wisely in the high cost of education. We agree that investing wisely in the high cost of education or specialty intervention services is critical; otherwise goals and outcomes may not be achieved and critical windows of opportunity can be lost. Families need a way to evaluate these many options and to make wise choices.

Right Fit Environment

Every child deserves the most ideal social and emotional environment in which to learn, grow and develop.

Parents seek an educational consultant for a number of reasons:

To bring clarity to a confusing array of educational options
To be guided to high quality school programming
To discover their student's unique learning needs
To eliminate chronic academic underachievement
For assistance with a child, adolescent or young adult in crisis
For accurate risk analysis
For objective analysis of educational goals and choices
For personal attention and assistance with the application process
For relocation assistance due to corporate, international or family moves
To facilitate & complete graduation requirements

Home School Families

Parents increasingly choose to take the lead in their children's education. They recognize the need to reclaim a quality of life, character education, scholarship, travel and experiential learning for their child and family. This option is a huge commitment for a family and often requires access to and networking with many resources in the community, across the nation, and around the world. Transitions to college or prep school, especially from home school settings, can be fraught with difficulties if planning for these transitions are not well guided. We welcome home school students into our practice and have over three decades of working with home-school families. We have learned and developed many good and helpful tools for successful curriculum enhancement, as well as successful school and college transition.

Local and Regional School Options

There are many wonderful alternatives in a family's own backyard and local town, of which they are often unaware. As a parent, you deserve to know the scope of local and regional options available to your child.

Parents often need help navigating public special education processes such as establishing IEPs and individual 504 plans for the public school classroom. We are available to assist with this process. Local and regional school options, both public and private, such as independent schools, tutorials, home school, virtual internet academies, high school-to-college options, technical and vocational schools or alternative schools may be viable choices for your student and provide the best fit school alternative.

The Student with Special Needs

Special needs consultants, such as Dana Dean Doering, Dr. Steve Tutty and Sarah Persha meet high standards and also possess comprehensive knowledge of therapeutic placement and treatment options. Some students have complex needs and require specialty learning or intervention school environments. Expert knowledge of these specialty schools and expert resources is essential as parents embark upon critical educational decision-making, and begin timely planning for assessment, specialty learning support, stabilization and appropriate intervention.

As special needs consultants we assess both a student's emotional and academic needs. We then analyze and match your child's educational and clinical needs to the program or school strengths and design elements. We combine this technical analysis with fun elements- like sports, recreation, art and culture. Also included are special preference items, such as equine therapies, DBT and talent development needs like advanced cello, piano, foreign language and art portfolio lessons.

These design elements are also weighted and evaluated to assess the cost-to-benefit ratio of school decisions. We further factor in the important elements of family culture, legacy and parent personal preferences. The school match is carefully completed, with a view to both your student's and family's individual needs.

Kids on the Spectrum & Kids with Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities

These are very special kids indeed! We have a forty-year history of working with children, adolescents and young adults with neuro-developmental and social delays. Thorough assessment and evaluation of developmental needs are critical to better understanding these students.

We delight in teaching social and emotional pragmatics, along with enhancing academic and performance pragmatics. These very bright and capable students need support and guidance that others do not. Their intuitive and implicit understanding of the world, and of other people, is simply lacking at times. This can be especially frustrating or embarrassing for these brilliant learners, when these same things seem so natural and easy to everyone else around them.

These lovely children can also provide unparalleled frustrations for their parents and teachers. We bring humor and decades of experience to these children, adolescents and young adults. They need greater satisfaction within their learning and social relationships. They need greater efficiency in their daily lives. We guide parents to enhanced understanding of their own child's special needs. We propose new school and career opportunities and training methods, as well as guide improved management of these special children, adolescents and young adults.

Adoption and Attachment

Special challenges present to kids and parents dealing with adoption adjustment issues. Every age and developmental stage of childhood requires special handling and sensitivity as we help adopted children grieve, rejoice, accept and move forward in their young lives. Confusion can abound, especially as children reach the age where these complex decisions and life histories need to make sense and reflect who they are as teens and young adults, and importantly, in future as parents themselves. We are attachment specialists and welcome the opportunity to assist families through turbulent times. Adoption is an on-going process of love, connection, joy and acceptance.

Twins

Interestingly, we are often asked to work with twin siblings. It is certainly a great joy for us to have this opportunity. These special children have unique needs and we are pleased to address them both as individuals and as twin siblings.

Original Article: Why do Parents Seek an Educational Consultant?