You leave an appointment with twenty pages and a headache. Relatives ask “so what is it?” and you still cannot say. That is not because you are slow. Most reports are written for the next professional, not for the parent who has to live the week.
This is a translation guide. It is not a re-score. We cannot re-run a test we did not give. If a number still makes no sense after you have read this, ask the person who wrote it — that is part of their job. If you want a second pair of eyes on whether the plan matches the child, that is a second opinion, not a new diagnosis.
The only three questions the report has to answer
- What can my child already do?
- What is actually stuck — in plain words, not a label?
- What should we try this week, and how will we know it helped?
If those three are missing, the report is a document, not a plan. A useful one names two or three goals specific enough that you would know when they had been met. “Improve communication” is not a goal. “Ask for a drink with a word or a picture, without leading me to the fridge” is.
Percentiles, age equivalents and standard scores
A percentile says how this child compared with the children the test was standardised on. The 16th percentile is not a disease. It means that, on that day, on that task, about 16 in 100 children in the sample scored at or below this. Tiredness, language of the test, and whether the child had a fever will move it.
An age equivalent is the most misleading number on the page. “Language age 3;2” does not mean your six-year-old is a three-year-old. It means their score on that subtest matched the average score of three-year-olds in the sample. It collapses a jagged profile into one age, which is exactly what you should not do with a child who has a splinter skill and a hole next to it.
A standard score (often with a mean of 100) is a way of placing the same result on a common scale. A band around the score — a confidence interval — matters more than the single number. If the report does not give one, treat the number as a range, not a pin.
None of these is a diagnosis. Autism, ADHD, intellectual disability and a hearing loss are medical or educational decisions made with more than one source. A score can support a picture. It cannot be the picture.
What to ignore, at least at first
- Every subtest listed without a sentence in ordinary language
- Jargon you cannot say out loud to a grandmother (if you cannot, it is not yet useful)
- A label with no next step
- Recommendations that would take four extra hours a day. Nobody has four extra hours
Highlight instead: the examples from your home, the two or three goals, and any medical follow-up (hearing, vision, sleep, a paediatrician). Those travel to a teacher. The rest stays in the file.
Handing it to school
Teachers act on a short list, not a scan of twenty pages. Two or three adjustments they can use on Monday — seating, one instruction at a time, extra time to start — beat a diagnosis name. Our letter to school and classroom support pages are written for that handover. In Punjab, a government scheme may ask for a disability certificate; that is a separate process from a therapy report.
What we write here
After a consultation at this centre you leave with findings in plain words the same day, not an envelope to decode at home. Mahnoor Baloch leads first assessments. We describe what we saw. We do not diagnose autism or ADHD, and we do not re-score someone else’s test. A consultation is Rs 1,500 and lasts up to 50 minutes, Monday to Friday, 2pm to 6pm in Model Town or online.
Related: what happens in a developmental assessment, what an IEP is, questions to ask a therapist.
If, after reading the report, the label itself does not seem to fit the child you live with, could my child’s diagnosis be wrong? explains how the common labels get confused and what a proper second look involves.