Everyone on the Child Decoded team has both personal and professional experience dealing with kids’ learning disorders and behavior problems in children. Whatever you’re dealing with, we’ve either been there or seen that!
Dr. Robin McEvoy
has been practicing developmental neuropsychology for 30 years. With each evaluation, she asks herself, “How can I help.” Many parents bring their kids in for evaluation because they are still struggling, despite working with a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a learning specialist or a whole team of specialists. The parents were doing “standard of care” thoroughly, but it was not enough. There were times she worried that she would not find a way to help, that the parents were already doing everything possible.
But she hates the thought of saying there was nothing else to be done. So instead of saying that, she decided to dig deeper. She dug into nutrition, sleep, medical conditions and myriad of complementary and alternative approaches to learning and behavior. (And while digging, she met Child Decoded co-founder, Kim Gangwish.)
By developing a more thorough understanding of the mind/body integration, she began to find other avenues that actually opened up new possibilities for children. She loves having options for families who had been told to just accept their child’s challenges and live with them. She had been told the same thing about her own daughter who had a severe speech disability and sensory issues. As both a developmental neuropsychologist and a parent, she became expert at mapping out paths through difficult presentations.
Dr. McEvoy earned her PH.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Houston, then went on to fellow in Psychobiology/Neuropsychology at the University of Colorado Medical School. She holds a research faculty position at the University of Colorado, and also maintains a private practice where she can evaluate using the Child Decoded model.
Evaluation is the heart of her work with children: helping families, pediatricians, and school districts to find a deeper understanding of complex challenges. Dr. McEvoy enjoys writing and blogs frequently for Child Decoded. She loves public speaking and is a highly rated speaker.
You can read more about Robin McEvoy at her website www.robinmcevoy.com. She blogs about learning and learning challenges as well as tons about “behavior problems in children” because she has strong opinions about that. You can follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DrRobinMcEvoy or on Twitter at twitter.com/RobinMcEvoy. She will try to be fascinating.
Kim Gangwish, B.S., A.P.
Kim Gangwish
is the original pioneer of the Child Decoded model. She has been speaking to groups of parents, teachers and practitioners about the need to look deeper than the symptoms for over 20 years.
After working with countless families whose children struggled with a range of issues – from emotional regulation problems and chronic anxiety to autism and specific processing deficits – she started to see patterns that underlie the visible issues. Addressing deeper problems first dramatically shifted children’s ability to respond to her and others’ therapies.
Gangwish’s work (LEAP or Learning Enhancement and Acupressure Program) uses a form of acupressure that focuses on precise neurological integration. She has helped hundreds of children to overcome resistant or complex learning and behavior disorders. But the second aspect to her job involves helping families to develop a full overview of their children’s issues, and to find a team that can address those issues in the most effective order.
Ms. Gangwish graduated from the University of Colorado with a BS in Psychology, and completed the two-and-a-half-year long training in LEAP after finishing a yearlong certification course in Applied Physiology. She has presented at international health conferences and educational programs for both teachers and parents. An adoptive mother herself, Ms. Gangwish has also been an active contributor to the adoption community.
She runs her private practice, The Life Enrichment Center, in both Louisville and Denver, Colorado. Ms. Gangwish lives in Louisville with one of her two sons, four dogs, and a parrot. She also owns two horses who are way too much work, and dreams of working with elephants.
Marijke Jones
is the developmental editor who took the experts’ raw material and transformed it into something stressed-out parents could deal with late at night. Having been one of those parents herself, she felt a strong kinship with that demographic. After surviving her own saga with her son CJ, whose story you can read here [https://bit.ly/3bzQo8L], she had what she calls her “Mom PhD” on many learning disabilities, sensory integration issues, and thinking outside the box to find solutions.
She jumped at the chance to work on Child Decoded because it truly is the book she wished she’d had when she was feeling lost. As a member of the Child Decoded team, she loves connecting with parents and helping them find their confidence and calm in the face of daunting issues. She blogs regularly for the Child Decoded newsletter, offering parenting tips from the trenches and interviews with practitioners whose offerings are often cutting-edge.
Ms. Jones received her BA from Cornell University, and has lived in Germany, France, and Japan. She used to be a therapist specializing in trauma, which actually helps her more than she expected when working with overwhelmed families.
When she’s not promoting the book, she freelance writes and edits, tries doggedly to improve her Spanish, travels whenever possible, and attempts to find the perfect gluten-free chocolate chip cookie recipe. She lives with her husband outside of Boulder, CO, and tries to entice her adult son and daughter to visit at every opportunity.
