Mind Matters, Real Answers: Rebecca MurrayMetzger on Evaluations That Actually Help Families Move Forward
Interview by Heather Anderson
Rebecca MurrayMetzger is a Licensed Psychologist and the founder of Mind Matters, a San Francisco and Berkeley based group practice that provides comprehensive evaluations for children, teens, and young adults. Mind Matters is known for being deeply collaborative with schools and care teams, especially for gifted and twice-exceptional learners and kids navigating learning differences. She also offers parent guidance consultations for families who know something feels “off,” but aren’t sure what to do next.
What stands out about Rebecca is how question-centered her approach is, and how she mentors her clinician team to hold the same curiosity. They are not just handing families a report and sending them on their way. They're helping parents, educators, and kids themselves understand what’s going on, what it means, and what to do about it, in a way that’s practical for real life.
You’ve been doing evaluations for about 20 years, but Mind Matters didn’t start as a big “group practice” vision. When did your work shift from solo practice to something larger, and what surprised you most?
Mind Matters started as a solo practice in 2013, after I’d worked for someone else’s clinic for nine years. Even when I was solo, I worked collaboratively with an educational specialist, so collaboration has always been part of how I practice.
The “group practice” shift really began in 2020, when a clinician reached out and asked if I mentored other evaluators. She had testing experience but wanted more guidance and consultation as she got better at the work.
What’s funny is that I didn’t think I wanted a group practice. The practice owner I worked for seemed really unhappy running one, and I didn’t want to replicate that.
But something about that moment felt right. After 15-ish years of doing evaluations, I finally felt like an expert. Not in a “I know everything” way, because there’s always more to learn. But in a way where I felt like I had something meaningful to teach other clinicians. So I said, “Yeah, let’s try it.”
That’s also how I make a lot of business decisions. Something can make sense intellectually, but there’s also a gut feeling of, “This is a door worth walking through.”
What surprised me was how much I loved the mentorship piece. Supporting clinicians through cases, helping them strengthen their judgment, and making sure families had a high-quality experience from the beginning. It grew organically from there because there was a real need, and I was enjoying mentoring others.
Today, our team model allows the ten of us to maintain very high standards of evaluation while consulting with one another regularly. We meet twice a month and also consult informally as needed, so families benefit not just from one clinician’s thinking, but from a team that is used to working collaboratively and rigorously.
“We can’t ever get a perfect 360-degree view of a person, but we can take a layered, systems-based approach.”
You’ve said you didn’t want to build a group practice because of what you’d seen behind the scenes elsewhere. What did you want to do differently, and how has that shaped the culture at Mind Matters?
One of the things I love about mentoring is helping someone become the best version of themselves as an evaluator.
All my clinicians are different. They have different strengths and different styles. They share some similarities because they’re drawn to the same kind of work and the way we serve families, but they’re not carbon copies of each other. I want to make room for those differences.
I’m doing a lot of teaching, but I’m also learning from them. I grow as a psychologist through collaborating with my team.
I’d describe our culture as very connected, with a high bar for quality and thoughtfulness. But we also value reflection, consultation, and intellectual humility and curiosity. The connection and mentorship process makes it clear pretty quickly whether someone is a fit. Clinicians get an honest look at what it’s like to work with our families, how we think, and the level of quality we hold ourselves to.
A lot of parents assume evaluations are standardized. You’re very clear that yours aren’t. What does a truly comprehensive evaluation look like in real life?
It starts with listening closely to the questions.
We spend about 90 minutes interviewing parents. We talk to school staff. We talk to therapists. The theme running through all of it is: What are you wanting to know, and how are you hoping the evaluation will help this child?
Different stakeholders sometimes have different concerns. Parents might be worried about one thing, the school might be seeing something else, and the child is experiencing it in their own way.
We can’t ever get a perfect 360-degree view of a person, but we can take a layered, systems-based approach. We’re looking at many aspects of development and personality, and also the environments the child is in, like home, school and peer, and how those systems interact.
There’s a general framework that’s consistent across evaluations. Parent intake. School observation. Interviews with stakeholders. Then usually about eight hours of testing with the child. The full arc tends to take about eight weeks.
But the important piece is that we evaluate as we go. We start with a framework, but we adjust based on what emerges. We might ask for videos of the child at home. We might do a second school observation or additional interviews with parents to further clarify what's happening with the child.
That flexibility reflects clinical judgment. The goal isn’t to move every family through the same template — it’s to understand this particular child well enough to answer the real questions and create a plan that fits their individual profile.
Not every evaluator works closely with schools, teachers, and therapists, but you do. Why is that collaboration so central to your approach, especially for kids struggling in school?
Our evaluation process is intense and it creates a real relationship, even though it’s time-limited.
At the end of the evaluation, we’re turning to the adults around the child. Schools and therapists help implement recommendations. They’re the ones walking forward with the child day-to-day, using the information to support learning, behavior, and emotional wellbeing.
So it’s important to build that relationship early. We want their perspectives and their questions from the beginning, and we want them to understand the results at the end so they can apply what we learned.
There’s also the practical reality that schools have cultures, constraints, and resources. Recommendations need to make sense in the context of that specific school. Talking with teachers helps us understand what’s realistic at school, what might require outside support, and what parents might need to do beyond the classroom.
Parents often arrive overwhelmed and unsure what’s going on. How often do families come in thinking they need one thing and discover something else through the evaluation?
It does happen sometimes, but I’ve found that when you really spend time listening, parents usually have a pretty good sense of what’s going on.
They may not have the language for it. They may not have the developmental context. Most parents have one to three kids, so they don’t have the same “range of kids” experience that educators or clinicians might.
But the information is often there in what they’re noticing.
A common example is autism. Parents might come in wondering about ADHD, and through the intake we start talking about autism as a question. That can take parents by surprise because some people still have a traditional view of what autism looks like, and they don’t realize how differently it can present in different kids. But as we talk to them about what Autism can look like, they usually understand why we are asking the question.
They just didn’t have the framework or language yet.
You’ve described Mind Matters as more “generalist” by design, rather than narrowly specializing in one diagnosis. Why was that important to you, and how does it serve families who don’t have clear answers yet?
I feel strongly that our clinicians should be able to assess the wide range of issues psychologists are licensed to evaluate for.
When a clinician specializes narrowly, a family might come in believing they need that specialty, but then the evaluation reveals other areas that also need attention. I don’t want a child to have to go through multiple separate evaluations to get a full understanding.
Because evaluations are intensive and emotionally meaningful, we believe in doing them thoroughly the first time. That said, different clinicians do have different strengths. The beauty of a team model is that we consult with each other. We meet twice a month, and we can consult outside those meetings too. So we’re generalist by design, but we can also draw on one another’s deeper knowledge in specific areas.
Parents ask, “Is an evaluation really worth it?” especially given the financial and emotional investment. What does a good evaluation actually unlock for a child and their family?
Understanding is the most powerful element.
When parents, teachers, and the child understand what’s going on, it builds empathy. A lot of kids we work with have behaviors that get negative reactions from adults. When they understand what’s underneath the behavior, adults become more patient and more curious. They start to see behavior as communication, rather than a disruption.
The second piece is guidance. Most families are eager to help their child. They just don’t know what the best next step is. A good evaluation creates a plan.
We survey our clients afterward, and an honest thing we hear is that many parents feel a little more worried after the evaluation. That can be hard to hear, because of course I’d love for them to feel less worried.
But often the worry is paired with clarity. It’s no longer vague anxiety. Now, they know what to do and the worry fuels action, instead of spiraling in uncertainty. And when a parent needs more time to digest, we support that too. Sometimes that means a second feedback session, clarifying parts of the report, or giving parents space to process.
An evaluation should not end with a PDF. It should result in shared understanding and forward momentum.
You also offer parent guidance consultations for families who know something is off but aren’t sure an evaluation is the right next step. What comes up in those conversations, and who are they most helpful for?
These are actually my favorite things to do.
A parent consultation is a lot of listening. A lot of asking questions. A lot of trying to understand what parents are seeing, what they’re worried about, and what questions they’re holding.
Then it’s about helping them choose next steps and pointing them in the right direction.
To be honest, a lot of times parents already know what they need to do. They just need reassurance that they’re not overreacting, and that the direction they’re considering makes sense. They also often need help connecting to resources.
So a big part of it is making connections. Helping them find therapists with the right skill set. Pointing them toward educational therapists or tutoring resources that fit their child’s needs. Helping them understand school supports and what collaboration could look like.
It’s gratifying work. And I’ll admit, between you and me, I was a bossy kid. This is basically the adult version of telling people what to do, and then watching it actually help.
Report-writing is intense, but it’s also where so much meaning lives for families. What do you want parents to feel when they read their child’s report for the first time?
I want it to sound like their child.
I want parents to feel like I’m talking about their kid, not a generic case. It should feel true and familiar.
And I also want it to contain information they didn’t know, or hadn’t been able to put into words. If I can do both, then I’ve helped them understand their child more deeply, while also validating what they’ve already been seeing.
Because you work with kids from preschool through college, you see the full arc. Are there any signs or struggles you wish parents and schools took more seriously earlier, before things snowball?
Reading is a big one.
There’s a “wait and see” tendency with reading because people assume kids will fall into a developmental window and it’ll click. Often parents are worried and they’re being reassured, usually from a good place.
But when a parent has a gut feeling something is going on, they’re often right.
With learning differences, the sooner a child gets the type of instruction that helps them learn to read, the better. Not only for the skill itself, but for self-esteem, interest in learning, and hope.
When reading struggles snowball, the emotional cost can be significant. Early clarity can prevent years of unnecessary discouragement.
You’re also a parent. How has that shaped the way you sit with families, especially when things feel emotional, heavy, or hard to hear?
I think it’s made me more practical, and more compassionate.
Some of the advice I’ve gotten as a parent wasn't realistic for a household with three kids. Being a parent helps me think, “What can you actually do, in real life, with multiple children and everything else going on?”
Parenting advice can look easy on paper. Implementing it with real humans takes time. It takes work. It takes repetition. I have more compassion for that because I live it too.
Sometimes I see parents worrying too much that something is “wrong” when their child is actually quite typical. Having that context can be calming.
On the flip side, being a psychologist has also helped me contextualize things I've experienced with my own children. There’s a big range of normal.
And of course, kids keep you humble. My oldest is 21 now, and he has been telling me since he was 10 or 12 that I’m not as good of a psychologist as I think I am.
You’re building your East Bay presence and adding new support services. What should local families, and local practitioners, know about what you’re growing there?
We have two clinicians in the East Bay and are continuing to build connections within that ecosystem.
We’re also developing additional short-term supports families have told us they wish existed after an evaluation — including Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PC-CARE), parent consultations around school collaboration, and skills-based support. These offerings are based on what families we’ve worked with have told us they wish existed as follow-up support.
If you’re a professional in the East Bay who works with children and believe your services could be a strong resource for the families we serve, we genuinely welcome connection and collaboration. Our model works best when we are part of a thoughtful, coordinated care network.
For a parent reading this who’s deep in school stress, homework battles, or that constant gut feeling that something isn’t adding up, what’s one reassuring thing you want them to hear right now?
Research shows you only have to be a good enough parent. You don’t have to be the perfect parent.
If you feel like you’ve made mistakes, it’s okay. Your child can build resiliency from repair and growth. You can learn about each other through those moments.
If you feel like you’ve missed something or gotten imperfect advice in the past, it’s not too late. Growth and clarity can happen at many stages.
There’s too much pressure on parents to do it perfectly from the beginning, and that’s not realistic. There isn’t one single “right” way to move forward. There are some wrong choices, sure. But there are also many right choices.
If someone is on the fence, wondering whether to reach out, book a consult, or even start asking questions, what’s the best first step you’d encourage them to take?
Reach out to our client care coordinator, Sasha.
Sasha understands our practice deeply and has been with us for five years. She has helped many families figure out what kind of evaluation or service makes sense, and which clinician might be the best fit.
Parents can contact her through our website or email her directly. She’s also happy to jump on the phone with parents.
If parents want to go one step further, we also offer free 15–20 minute calls with clinicians, so parents can make sure the fit feels right.
Connect with Rebecca MurrayMetzger on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram.
You can also find her on The M List, The Mamahood’s searchable database of mom-recommended resources, or connect and collaborate with Rebecca MurrayMetzger inside The Club membership for women Founders.