Parents usually arrive asking about the child. That is the right question, and it is rarely the only one worth asking. This guide covers all three.
By Sam Roberts, MA Professional Counselling; Clinical Supervisor (ACA) — last reviewed 2026-09-05
For a child aged five to twelve, choose the parent-completed check that matches what you have observed most often: emotional wellbeing, worry, anger and regulation, behaviour and emotional needs, school adjustment, or attention. For a teenager, parent guidance and adolescent support sit on ProTeens, in different language. And if the honest answer is that you are the one running out of road, the parenting and caregiving checks are the right place to start.
Parent-completed checks for children aged five to twelve describe what you have observed at home over recent weeks. They do not test the child, they are not completed by the child, and they are not shown to the child. What they do is turn a diffuse worry into a specific description you can act on.
Choose by the observation, not by the fear. If the change is in mood, energy and enjoyment, the emotional wellbeing check fits. If your child seeks constant reassurance, avoids new situations, or asks the same anxious question repeatedly, the worry check fits. If the difficulty arrives as meltdowns, frustration and trouble coming back down, the anger and regulation check describes it best.
If behaviour is the visible problem but you suspect something underneath it, the behaviour and emotional needs check is designed for exactly that gap. If the difficulty appears around school — reluctance, morning resistance, difficulty settling after a transition — start with school adjustment. And if the theme is attention, organisation and following through, the child attention check is the one.
It gives you a structured picture of what one observer, in one setting, has seen recently. That is genuinely valuable, and it is partial by design. A teacher completing the same items would produce a different picture, and both would be accurate.
It cannot diagnose anything, and it should not be used to decide that a child has a condition. Children develop unevenly, and a great deal of behaviour that worries parents is developmentally ordinary, temporary, or a response to something in the environment — a new sibling, a class change, a difficult year.
What a check does well is tell you whether what you are seeing is frequent enough and disruptive enough to be worth a conversation with someone who works with children.
Adolescence changes both the content and the approach. Teenagers are entitled to more privacy, respond badly to being assessed behind their backs, and generally know more about their own inner life than anyone else in the household.
Our adolescent work is deliberately parent-facing and non-clinical in its language: school stress, motivation, confidence, belonging, and above all parent-teen communication. It sits on ProTeens rather than here, in wording designed so a teenager who finds it open on a laptop is not offended by it.
If you are worried about a teenager, the highest-yield move is almost never a questionnaire. It is a conversation that does not begin with a solution, does not happen in the middle of an argument, and does not require them to explain themselves.
Parenting strain is real, common and rarely admitted. Sustained caregiving without recovery produces shorter fuses, less patience for exactly the behaviour that needs patience most, guilt afterwards, and a quiet conviction that everyone else is finding it easier.
A parenting or caregiver strain check is not a judgement of whether you are a good parent, and it does not measure that. It measures load and reaction, which are the two things most amenable to change.
It is also the check most likely to change something quickly, because a parent who is less depleted responds differently to the same difficult evening — and the child feels that before they can explain it.
If the result points to a pattern that has lasted more than a few weeks, is showing up in more than one setting, or is affecting school, sleep or family life, arrange a conversation with someone who works with children and families.
Bring the result with you. Practitioners work from specific examples across time, and a completed check plus a fortnight of notes about when things were worse and better makes a first session substantially more useful.
Say the honest version out loud, including the part about your own patience. It is the most common thing parents leave out and the most useful thing they can include. Nobody sitting opposite you is keeping score, and a practitioner who does not know how depleted you are will suggest strategies that assume a reserve you do not currently have.
Be careful how you talk about the result at home. Children absorb far more than parents expect from overheard conversations, and a child who learns that they were "tested" and found wanting can carry that longer than the original difficulty. Describe it to them, if you describe it at all, as something you did to understand how to help — because that is what it is.
Finally, give any change you make a fair run. Sleep routines, predictable transitions, shorter homework blocks and calmer mornings rarely produce visible results in three days; four to six weeks is a more honest window. Retaking the same check at the end of that window gives you a comparison, and comparisons are far more informative than any single result.
This article is general information, not clinical advice, and nothing in it diagnoses anything. If what you read here matches your experience closely, that is a reason to speak to someone qualified rather than a conclusion in itself.