MARC’s Spectrum of Solutions hosted a Fall Festival on October 17 to welcome licensed psychologist Dr. Janet Carter. The festival included refreshments, carnival games, cookie decorating, and prizes for its clients and their parents.
Dr. Carter says she truly lives for helping the lives of children and adults struggling with an array of developmental disabilities.
"I can evaluate a child's general thinking abilities. And I think I'm safe in saying that I'm the only one in the Midland Odessa area that can do cognitive abilities with non-verbal test. I'm not aware of anyone else in the area that can do that," said Dr. Carter.
Dr. Carter offers a wide variety of services like psycho educational testing, neuro-psychological and autism testing, counseling intake evaluations, and parenting counseling. And now, MARC is the only institute offering these crucial services to children and their families in the Permian Basin.
"I check cognitive abilities, I can check on academic achievement or how the child compares to other children his or her age to see if they're on track for school. We have social measures that we can give parents and teachers to determine whether their social interactions are on par. So basically we can check the whole ball of wax how's that?," said Dr. Carter.
Dr. Carter says these are all issues that are common in today's society and shouldn't be frowned upon.
"Unfortunately we're not living at a society right now where children are spared from anxiety and it's not just a matter of things like the shooting that occurred recently in Odessa. it's a matter of feeling pressure to do well in school so some of that anxiety just gets incorporated into their sense of who they are we have to help them to get a handle on that and relax a little bit," said Dr. Carter.
But the big question is when should you consider therapy or a place like MARC?
"If there's something that you're struggling with as a parent, or something that you feel is off or that you're missing in terms of I don't know what to do about this.. than I say make the call and come in," said Dr. Carter.
"It's a lot easier to fix things then it is to keep struggling with issues that keep happening over and over again. Parenting is the hardest job on the planet and I think psychologist haven't done the best job of letting parents know that we have ways to help them. So I think my primary role here at MARC, is letting parents know that they have a support system."