Attention & ADHD
Attention & ADHD evaluations for children and teens
Attention difficulties look different in every child — and they are frequently mistaken for laziness, defiance, or anxiety. A thorough evaluation identifies what is actually driving the difficulty.
Serving Long Island & Queens, NY
What to look for
What attention difficulties can look like
- •Starting tasks easily but rarely finishing them
- •Needing instructions repeated, or missing steps in the middle
- •Losing track of assignments, materials, and deadlines
- •Focusing intensely on preferred activities but not on required ones
- •Careless errors on work the child clearly knows how to do
- •Restlessness, fidgeting, or difficulty settling — or the opposite: quiet drifting
Attention is not one skill. It's several — and children can struggle with some while excelling at others.
Why it gets missed
Bright children are often overlooked
Many capable children compensate well enough that attention difficulties go unrecognized for years. They stay quiet, get by on ability, and their struggles are read as carelessness or lack of motivation.
The difficulty often becomes visible only when demands increase — usually in middle school, when organization and independent follow-through start to matter as much as understanding the material.
Girls in particular are frequently identified late, because inattentive difficulties tend to be quieter and less disruptive than hyperactive ones.
A common misread
The behavior looks like one thing. The cause is often another.
“They could do it if they just tried harder.”
- ✔Difficulty sustaining attention on non-preferred tasks
- ✔Working memory that drops instructions partway through
- ✔Trouble initiating a task, even when the child wants to
- ✔Slow processing that makes keeping up genuinely hard
- ✔Anxiety that presents as distraction
- ✔A learning difficulty making the work harder than it appears
Effort is rarely the missing ingredient. The right explanation is.
Why it matters
Why identifying it early makes a difference
children have learning or attention differences that affect school performance.
of students with learning and attention difficulties are never properly identified early.
more likely to experience anxiety or low self-esteem when the cause goes unidentified.
identification leads to better academic outcomes and stronger confidence.
faqs
Attention & ADHD evaluations
How is this different from a checklist at the pediatrician's office?
Rating scales are a useful starting point, but they describe behavior without explaining it. A neuropsychological evaluation directly measures attention, working memory, processing speed, and executive functioning, and distinguishes ADHD from anxiety, learning difficulties, or sleep-related factors that can look very similar.
Could this be anxiety instead of ADHD?
It can be — and sometimes it is both. Anxiety can consume the mental resources attention depends on, producing distraction that looks identical from the outside. A comprehensive evaluation is designed to tell these apart and to identify when more than one factor is present.
My child focuses for hours on video games. Can it still be ADHD?
Yes. Attention difficulties are usually most apparent with tasks that are effortful, repetitive, or not intrinsically rewarding. Sustained focus on highly engaging activities is common and does not rule anything out.
What will we walk away with?
A clear explanation of your child's attention profile, a diagnosis where one fits, and specific recommendations for school and home — including the documentation typically needed to request accommodations such as extended time.
Does a diagnosis mean my child will need medication?
Not necessarily, and that decision isn't made here — we don't prescribe. Medication is one option among several, and it's a conversation for you and your child's physician. The evaluation focuses on the full picture: classroom accommodations, executive-functioning strategies, environmental changes, and skill-building all form part of the recommendations regardless of what you decide about medication.
The school already evaluated my child. Why do this too?
School evaluations answer a specific question: does the child qualify for services under educational criteria. That's a narrower question than why the difficulty exists. A private evaluation can diagnose, examine areas the school assessment didn't cover, and explain how attention interacts with learning, memory, and emotional functioning."
More than an attention test
What a thorough evaluation examines
Attention interacts with nearly every other thinking skill, so an accurate picture requires assessing them together.
No two attention profiles are alike, so the testing is selected around your child's history and the questions you need answered.
The process
How the evaluation works
Consultation
We discuss the attention concerns you see at home and what teachers are reporting at school.
Records review
We review report cards, prior evaluations, and behavior rating scales from more than one setting.
Testing
Two to three sessions assessing sustained attention, impulse control, working memory, and academic skills.
Interpretation
Dr. Duhning determines whether ADHD fits — and what else may be contributing to the picture.
Report
We meet to review the findings, the reasoning behind them, and what they mean day to day.
Roadmap
You receive a plan for school accommodations and practical strategies for home.
After the evaluation
What changes once you have answers
A diagnosis is only useful if it leads somewhere. The report translates findings into specific, practical steps for the people around your child every day.
That typically includes classroom accommodations, home strategies that reduce daily conflict, guidance for conversations with teachers, and — where appropriate — the documentation needed for a 504 plan or IEP meeting.
- ✓Clear diagnostic answers, including what is not contributing
- ✓Accommodations matched to your child's specific attention profile
- ✓Strategies for homework, organization, and follow-through at home
- ✓Documentation to support school planning and accommodation requests
Ready to understand what's really going on?
An evaluation replaces guesswork with a clear profile — and a plan you can act on.
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