To be able to offer children with developmental disorders adequate help, professionals working in special needs education must use a screening device to assess the specific psychiatric difficulties of the children. In this paper the psychometric properties of an easy-to-use parental rating scale to screen symptoms of major psychiatric disorders (ADHD, ODD, CD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, Depression and Autism) are investigated in a random sample of 2536 Dutch children that were rated by their parents. The internal, inter-rater and test-retest reliabilities all meet the requirements set out for rating scales intend for diagnostic purposes. Parental ratings show a consistent pattern of convergent and divergent validity with CBCL scores. Predictive validity was demonstrated in reference to children receiving mental health services. (Contains 5 tables.)