PODCAST / RADIO / WEBINARS


KGNU Radio interview with Child Decoded Authors
January 25, 2018
Kim Gangwish and Marijke Jones discuss how Child Decoded came to be, and how they want to help parents with this innovative and unique resource. Listen Here.

Positively Autism
August 12, 2017
Positively Autism focuses on making learning fun and meaningful for students with autism, so of course, they were interested in hearing about Child Decoded.


Webinar for ADDitude Magazine  – Beyond Dyslexia:Overcoming Reading Challenges for Kids with ADHD

July 26, 2017
Dyslexia is a reading disability, but not all reading disabilities are due to dyslexia. This invited webinar explores the other possible contributors to reading challenges.

Tilt Parenting
Sept. 12, 2017
Tilt is all about parenting the differently wired child, so talking about Child Decoded and the deep dive into underlying issues fit right in.

Joyful Courage
Nov. 28, 2017
Parenting a typical kid takes courage some days. With the increase in identification of learning and attention problems, more parents are looking for help. We need resources that let us look at the big picture and find ways to dig deep under the surface of symptoms.

Ellen Stumbo, Unexceptional Moms
May 22, 2017
For some of us who have children with learning difficulties, it can be hard to identify challenges and know how to help our kids work through them. Ellen Stumbo was excited to interview Dr. Robin McEvoy about Child Decoded to hear about how to consider different contributors to learning disabilities.


One in a Million Baby

May 26, 2017
What happens when your baby is considered one in a million due to rare medical complications? You start a podcast to support other families. Dr. Robin McEvoy was invited to discuss ways of supporting development in complex kids using an integrated care model that considers multiple areas of development.


Bright and Quirky Summit Podcast Interview with Dr. Robin McEvoy
March 1, 2019

The Bright and Quirky Summit is an online conference that brings in a range of professionals to support parents of the bright and quirky kids out there. Dr. Robin McEvoy was invited to talk about the philosophy of looking under the surface when exploring challenges.

Podcast with The Testing Psychologist (Coming soon)
May 16, 2019
A talk with Dr. Jeremy Sharp geared to psychologists who do evaluations. We spent a lively 90 minutes discussing my focus on integrating a whole child approach to the psycho-educational evaluation and how I try to think “outside-the-box” when parents have been thorough with the “standard of care approaches.”

PRESENTATIONS

April 18, 2018

PEN (Parent Engagement Network) Symposium on Stress and Anxiety, February 2017 and January 2018

Kim Gangwish and Marijke Jones break down the iceberg model to explain how underlying factors worsen or create symptoms of stress and anxiety, and present solutions that go beyond mere management.

May 2017

New Hope Webinar

Kim Gangwish breaks down the iceberg model, explaining why it is essential to understanding and addressing learning and behavior issues.

Oct. 2017

Reading in the Rockies (hosted by The Rocky Mountain Branch of the International Dyslexia Association)

Dr. Robin McEvoy presents Child Decoded: Looking Past the Labels to Address the Needs. When children are given a diagnosis, it is often not much more than a label, a few words being used to describe a multitude of children. Dr. McEvoy describes how to peek under those labels to see why someone thinks that label fits (and then what to do about it).

April 2018

Monarch High School

Kim Gangwish and Marijke Jones breaks down the iceberg model to explain how underlying factors worsen or create learning and behavior challenges, and present solutions that go beyond mere management.

April 2018

Reading in the City (hosted by The Rocky Mountain Branch of the International Dyslexia Association)

Dr. Robin McEvoy presents Child Decoded: Looking Past the Labels to Address the Needs (repeat of 10/2017 presentation at their request).

INTERVIEWS

Interview with the Child Decoded authors

Excerpt from the San Francisco Book Review, May of 2017

What has been the most revolutionary turning point in your careers–either from conducting research or from experiences with clients, which drastically informed the direction of Child Decoded?

There was no “revolution,” just slow and steady revelation. We spent years working with kids, giving lectures, and watching the evolution in educational demands, as well as the evolution of unusual learning needs (the explosion of children with autism being just one example). Then, parenting our own kids helped bring it all together.

All three of us had personal and professional experiences that led us to dig deeper than the symptoms, a phrase we use constantly when discussing this book. Both Ms. Gangwish and Dr. McEvoy (the practitioners of the team) realized early on that there was much more going on than the academic or behavioral struggles you can see on the surface. They both cultivated relationships with other practitioners, who address other aspects of health–from digestion and nutrition to sensory processing basics. Over the years, they developed a network of professionals that address the whole child, not just his/her symptoms. It took longer to put the whole picture together, but parents could then create a much more comprehensive and effective plan. These experiences led Gangwish and McEvoy to create the approach that serves as the philosophical foundation of the book.

Sometimes people hear about this “larger picture” philosophy and get overwhelmed just thinking about it. Understandable. But for parents whose children have complicated combinations of issues or whose supposedly “straightforward” issues are resisting treatment, looking deeper is the only place left to go. And, in our experience, parents in this position are relieved to find out that there is another way to look at the picture so that they get more comprehensive answers.

What do you predict will be the status of education in the next 5 to 10 years, with the availability of specific resources in low-income communities?

We are not “education policy” specialists. We focus on identifying and treating learning challenges. Our goal is to help empower parents to understand their own children, thereby enabling them to fight their own unique fight more effectively. We hope that educational policy-makers will be more responsive to individual families, especially considering the increase in learning challenges, and the fact that even neurotypical learners are becoming more and more diverse. If the government wants an educated populace, this is what they will need to deal with. This is, most likely, a change that will need to come from the ground up.

Education in America continues to evolve, often with a few steps forward and then a step back. We are better now at educating diverse learners than we ever were in the past, and still there is much work to be done. Children disadvantaged due to low income, learning disabilities, mental health needs or any combination of challenges require specialized resources.

Ever since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the federal government has tried to find ways of ensuring all students are given equitable opportunities for learning. The No Child Left Behind Act and, more recently, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) are updates to try to represent the current needs of our students and our society. While ESSA actually decreased the federal oversight of education in many ways (to ease demands on schools), there is still a focus on accountability to all students. Schools must show evidence that they are meeting the needs of students, particularly those with special challenges such as poverty. However, the Trump administration has delayed implementation of some parts of ESSA when they delayed implementation of pending regulations enacted during the Obama administration. We will have to see what sort of progress is made in the next few years.

On the bright side, in another branch of government, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that schools may not settle for minimal educational progress for students with disabilities. This ruling stemmed from a lawsuit in our home state of Colorado. For years, many school districts here had argued successfully for a standard of little more than “de minimis” for students with disabilities. These students merely had to make some minimal progress each year in their academic goals. In a unanimous ruling that will have implications across the country, the Supreme Court rejected the de minimis standard. Students with disabilities are entitled to a “free appropriate public education” (FAPE). Given this, minimal academic gains were not found to fall within the domain of appropriate.

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