The process of change often starts before any assessment has even taken place. In order to get to that point, a parent or carer has usually engaged in thinking about their child in a different way: they are starting to wonder if there is something that might be different about them that they should at least investigate or know more about.
The assessment process itself then often involves finding things out about psychological and other issues that might be new to them. In particular, this can involve discovering what neurodevelopmental problems are and how they can be misunderstood - for example, as just being about bad behaviour. It can also bring clarity to what has perhaps been a confusing experience with people using a variety of terms without it being entirely clear what they mean.
The results of the assessment generally provide a wealth of specific information - not just a diagnosis but hopefully a way of understanding their child that is based on neuropsychological evidence. Developmental neuropsychology is incredibly complicated - and unpicking what is going on for a child from a brain functioning perspective is a very involved process. Whilst not everything will always become clear, it generally makes a lot more sense when their child's behaviour and experiences can be tied to what we think is going on in terms of information processing.
For older children in particular, the assessment process and its outcome can be particularly helpful. It might be the first time they have been able to really talk about what is going on for them when they are struggling with something - and why they respond in the way that they do.
What then often flows from the assessment is a set of interacting changes in the child, their parents/carers and their teachers or school environment. The first layer of changes often happen somewhat invisibly as they are really about changes in how things are thought about and responded to. The child stops thinking they are stupid or bad. The parent stops thinking they are failing. The teacher changes their perspective on what is needed or most important about the child's education. Often, this all happens without anything concrete yet being done - and the change in mindset can be the most important single step.
The longer-term process of change then starts, which involves a combination of input and specific adjustments - and quite often it is not remedial input that makes the most difference. For example, if you have a profound deficit in motor control or visual information scanning, it will probably matter little how much you practice those compared to how much you learn to work around them. Improvements in complex activities, which includes everything from reading and writing through to a dissertation, are rather more variable because they depend on so many different cognitive systems and processes - so you can often see changes at that level without there being some development in a specific underlying cognitive issue.
