Dara,
that's pretty half *something'ed* if you ask me...was this guy board certified in pediatric psychiatric and pediatric neurology? Also, I'm wondering who referred you to him...insurance company, pediatrician, neurologist, friend? In searching and searching for answers for our difficult child, we finally got lucky when we had some great neurologists and our pediatrician all recommend the same neuropsychologist. He's expensive and of course doesn't take insurance, but he's been worth it. He spent 1.5 hours with us the first visit and he asked for any forwarded medical/personal evaluations to be held until after we left. He said he'd rather go in not "knowing" and talk to us and difficult child and make his determination, then look at the medical/personal evaluations (on his own time, not charged to us) and see if they agreed or not (if so he said great, if not, he said he'd do another evaluation. of over an hour for the 15 minute price). He did spend the first session talking mostly to us, but then had some time to inneract with difficult child (he was great) and then back to us to tell us what he thought. Second visit was 90% spent with difficult child and 10% with us...all phone calls returned within hours...our latest visit (yesterday) was scheduled because of some perseverating difficult child's been doing that has worried us...he charged us a 15 min. appointment. but stayed with us for an hour, most of that time he talked with difficult child *4 year old* and getting a handle on why he might be stuck on some distressing thoughts/actions.
I only say this because of the three neuropsychs we were told were "good" possibilities, we chose the one we did because after talking to our pediatrician and all of the neurologists, this guy got the best recommendations for being compassionate and helpful, not just smart...I think if his only "diagnosis" possiblity is something a machine told him, he's not taking enough time to learn about his patient, and that's close to being neglectful in my mind. Is there any way you could ask around about this guy's reputation for digging for answers and exhausting possibilities? Perhaps if all of these "reviews" are favorable, you could call and ask him to talk to you via the phone for a few minutes because you had questions about the evaluation...then you could ask him if he can find a way to at least give you a plan...if that plan doesn't work, ok, then you go to the next plan, but you need to know that a map exists, if you wanted to be told something you already knew without any idea of where you should go, I'm guessing you could have just sat down with your husband and figured all of that out by yourselves! No expensive equipment required. An hour with him for initial evaluation with only one observation that you could have told him before the meeting started and no help lended to you isn't really what is supposed to go on...he should have at least given you a starting point to work from. Our neuropsychologist still says he's not entirely certain about a specific diagnosis but he's sure it is going to fall under one or two "umbrellas" of mood disorder categories...he gave us non-medication options to try as well as a few medications to think about and we went over the pros and cons of each and decided on a point A to start...so far it is helping but we'd never have reached that point without him giving us a place to start. When you go to the dev. pediatrician, I'd have some things written down...outline of behaviors that bother you as well as anything the school system or other professionals have thought about, and I'd tell the guy up front, look, we've been asking for help for "x" amount of years and we need something more than just "he's anxious." We know that but we need a plan. Sometimes if they know you aren't going to accept half baked attempts at taking your money with no return on your investment, they'll be more apt to put their thinking caps on. Seriously, I'd call the neuropsychologist's office and tell the person who answers the phone that you need a few short minutes of his time in the next 24-48 hours and then I'd tell him, hey look, we spent a lot of time and effort and money to get in to see you, and you basically told us nothing new, you're supposed to at least give us a plan...maybe not the right one, but at least give us something to try! (but then again, I'm a pushy broad!)
Best of luck...if you were closer to my neck of the woods, I'd tell you to dump the guy and check out our guy...Best of luck to you.