When people hear that I trained at Children’s Hospital of Michigan and completed my postdoctoral fellowship at Michigan Medicine Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) they might assume that a move into private practice would feel anticlimactic — too simple or straightforward, even. I’ll be honest: I wondered the same thing.
I was wrong.
My training in pediatric medical settings was formative in every sense. I worked with children navigating traumatic brain injuries, strokes, seizure disorders, cerebral palsy, pediatric cancers, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, and a range of genetic and craniofacial conditions. I sat with families during some of the most frightening moments of their lives and tried to help them understand what was happening in their child’s brain — and what it might mean for who that child would become. That work shaped how I think about everything.
What I’ve discovered since joining Arbor Psychology Group is that the same depth lives in nearly every referral I receive, just in a different form. The third grader whose teacher keeps flagging attention concerns? When I untangle the layers, I often discover a child whose profile is genuinely complex — maybe a history of early medical stressors, a learning pattern that doesn’t fit neatly into one diagnostic box, a family that’s been trying to make sense of a moving target for years. The adolescent referred for an autism evaluation arrives carrying years of confusing social experiences, academic struggles, and caregivers desperate for language to wrap around what they’ve always sensed but couldn’t name.
Some of the questions are different from those I asked in the hospital. But the stakes are just as real.
What I bring to this work is the practice of looking at the whole child — cognitive, emotional, behavioral, developmental, and medical factors together — because that’s how I was trained to think. I don’t separate the neuropsychological profile from the child’s relationships, school environment, and lived experience. I aim to write reports that give families and providers something they can actually use: a clear picture of the whole cognitive and behavioral profile — strengths and weaknesses alike — and specific, tailored recommendations that make sense for this particular child’s life.
Arbor Psychology Group has been a deeply satisfying place to do this work. My colleagues are caring and thoughtful, the families I’ve met are genuinely invested in understanding their children, and — compared to the pace of a hospital setting — I have more time and bandwidth to pick up the phone and connect with the teachers, pediatricians, and specialists who know my patients best. Collaborative care isn’t just a buzzword; it’s something I can act on every day.
If you have a patient you think might benefit from a neuropsychological evaluation — or if you’re not sure whether a referral makes sense — I welcome the conversation.
Samantha Levick, Ph.D.
Pediatric Neuropsychologist
