Social-Emotional Assessments
What is a Social Emotional Assessment?
Do you or your child have trouble interacting with others such as peers, co-workers, family, parents, et cetera. Or do you or your child regularly experience anger, sadness or anxiety? The social emotional assessment explores social belonging, troubling behaviour, temperament, emotional regulation, self-esteem, the impact of trauma, the perception of self and others or other life challenges and how the individual is responding to it and many other factors.
This type of assessment is useful for someone who responds, ‘I’m fine” to the question of how you are doing, even when behaviour and other aspects imply this is not true. These tests can bring deeper insight and awareness to issues that are not in the conscious understanding by identifying inner anxieties and conflicts.
Effective strategies and interventions are possible when the person’s inner world is fully understood with the purpose of facilitating psychological well-being. A social emotional assessment does not determine cognitive function.
When Should Someone Take a Social Emotional Assessment?
Here are some signs to help you determine if you, your child or someone you love needs to take a social emotional assessment:
- Regular and pronounced anxiety, fear, sadness, or depression
- Difficulty with managing and controlling emotions
- Disproportionate anger, undo aggression, defiance to authority
- Negative outlook on self and the world, low self-esteem
- Difficulty identifying and connecting with peers
- Frequent conflicts with siblings
- When a child or someone you love has been through any of the following:
- a victim of bullying or abuse by peers or adults
- been adopted, and is experiencing conflict with new family
- experienced a significant change or loss in their lives: Divorce, immigration, illness or death in the family, birth of a sibling, loss of a pet