Can you tell me a little about yourself?

I am married, with two teenagers: a son in college studying engineering and a daughter in high school who is a very talented artist. I was a working musician before attending graduate school. Raised along the mid-Atlantic coastline, my wife and I moved to Florida in the late 1990s following a snowy internship year in Omaha with Boys Town. We now enjoy a landlubber life in Jupiter after having boated throughout Southwest Florida for over a decade. I balance family life, my practice, and my role as CEO and education director of the Institute for Behavioral Pediatrics, a global professional development company. In short, I have a happy family life and I love my work.

How long does a course of therapy take, and how effective is it?

Whereas some client families require only 2 or 3 sessions, most families attend somewhere between 7 and 10 sessions over 3 to 4 months’ time and most find success with all clinical goals. Success depends upon many factors, however, with perhaps the most important being parental adherence with the guidance that is offered. I make myself available between sessions for “tech support” when that is needed.

A clinic-based study my research team published in 2019 in the peer-reviewed journal Children’s Health Care (i.e., Kidwell, McGinnis, et al.) showed normalization of emotional and behavioral presentation for 100% of the clinically complex sample of children ages 6 to 11 after an average of 8 sessions. All participating clinicians were trained in the treatment model I developed. We were confident in the approach but still surprised by this finding.

I take this work very seriously and always strive to be among the best at what I do.

What does the process look like?

In most cases: The first session is a parent-only meeting and can be in person or via telehealth as you prefer. We will go over all the relevant history and current concerns, discuss next steps, and I can answer any questions you might have. The second session is for me to meet your child, and this is geared for establishing rapport and familiarity as well as discuss the concerns and other relevant considerations from your child’s perspective. The third session is typically a parent-only meeting for treatment planning so we ensure we are on the same page as to goals and approach going forward.

These first three sessions are dedicated to ensuring we move from intake to case closure as effectively and efficiently as possible with durable effect. Once our goals are reached, followup sessions are scheduled and faded over time, and I remain available to my families between sessions and after case closure.

Do you take insurance?

For many principled reasons, I do not participate in-network with any insurer. I do, however, offer all codes required for you to file for reimbursement on your own should you have out-of-network benefits, and many policies pay you more than they would pay me. More on that is found here.

I hear there are different kinds of therapists. What kind of therapist are you?

Therapists are trained very differently from one another and hold many different credentials. I am a doctoral-level behavioral psychologist who takes a compassionate yet science-based approach to solving problems. My particular skill stack includes psychology, behavior analysis, school psychology, and health psychology, with additional expertise in sleep health and children with intellectual giftedness. I screen each new client request thoughtfully for appropriateness, and approach each case I accept with an interdisciplinary mindset, looking to solve all related problems whether in my office or via telehealth or via referral to a trusted multidisciplinary colleague as part of a larger coordinated team approach.

In short, I strive to be the one to figure it out, and to be the last psychologist your family needs for the concerns bringing you to my services.

Do you prescribe medication and support its use?

Physicians such as pediatricians and psychiatrists prescribe medication, whereas psychologists like myself do not.

I usually say, “I am not for medication, but I’m also not against it either” – meaning that there are so many things more sustainable and less invasive we can do prior to medication use, consistent with the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics as to ADHD treatment with young children, for example. Yet, once all those alternatives are exhausted, medication can prove to be a blessing for some children. In my practice, this is needed only rarely, though.

I indeed work with medication prescribers when indicated. Sometimes, for example, a psychostimulant is being used for ADHD before I meet the family, and in finding problems with delayed sleep onset, I sometimes consult with prescribers to find a solution that improves onset latency. For such reasons, interdisciplinary case formulation and multidisciplinary collaboration are important.

I think my child has ADHD and a learning disability. Do you offer testing for that?

I offered neuropsychological evaluations earlier in my career but eventually came to the conclusion that it wasn’t as helpful as I thought it was.

Looking very closely, it occurred to me that not only is testing unnecessary for diagnosis, but diagnosis itself in mental health only describes or characterizes, but does not explain, the “symptoms” used to make the diagnosis. In other words, ADHD and learning disability are not the causes of distractibility, disorganization, hyperactivity, impulsive behavior, or being at a lower grade level academically, but only how we verbally summarize those things. For professionals to assert otherwise would be to engage in circular reasoning. I ended up explaining this in detail in Chapter 2 of my book, Introduction to Primary Care Behavioral Pediatrics, published by Routledge in 2024.

There nevertheless are valid reasons for testing and to arrive at a mental health diagnosis like ADHD or learning disorder, which include opening the door to classroom accommodations and perhaps even medication if indicated. And if you are seeking insurance reimbursement, they’ll want a diagnosis. As a psychologist, I can make clinical diagnoses and do so where helpful to my families, without requiring a big test-based evaluation. When testing is necessary for a particular purpose, I gladly refer to trusted colleagues for it.

The bottom line here is that lots of problems can be solved without testing or diagnosis. The alternative to these is comprehensive case formulation, which I prefer and which may or may not involve testing or diagnosis. It usually saves a lot of time and money.

I have a family member in another state who could really use your services. Can you serve them too?

Perhaps! I hold a credential that allows me to serve families in most US states via telehealth. That list of states is found on the home page of this website.