| Bob Sholtes, MD founded
Celebrating Minds in 2003.
He is a board certified child,
adolescent and adult
psychiatrist. After
completing his child psychiatry
fellowship at Duke University in
1986, he joined the faculty at
the University of South Carolina
and provided services to grade
school children requiring
hospitalization. He was
astounded by how often children
presenting with emotional and
behavioral problems were
struggling with learning
problems. Through
continued services to children
and families, he also noticed how
often children presented with
parents who had very similar learning
differences.
With basic learning strategy
approaches he witnessed
remarkable improvements in the children and
even parents in their learning
experience and in turn, their
emotional well being. In
addition, he began to notice how
little was
understood about
neurodevelopmental functions.
Fortunately, Dr. Mel Levine
was busy tying together some to
the best information available
and organizing it into observable
phenomena called
neurodevelopmental constructs.
He learned that to understand learning differences
he needed to ask
the students, parents and
teachers about their
experiences. With this
shared information he was able
to make more
sense than the mainstream
approach of
psychological tests that measure
"norms" and identify "deviations
from the norm."
After
reading more and
participating in the
clinician's conference he
began to work with educators,
psychologists and other health
professionals to do a better job
of understanding and serving
children and families he serves.
After moving from Glen Ellyn to
Evanston in 2003, Bob began to
organize Celebrating Minds.
By the end of that year, it was
established as a not for profit
organization committed to
supporting the education of
students, parents and teachers
about how to make the most of
developmental variation rather
than making differences into
disabilities. He has
worked with children and teens,
parents, educators,
neuropsychologists, speech and
language specialists and
occupational therapists in a
team effort to provide the best
possible assessments and plans
based on the notion of honoring
differences.
He has more recently began
serving adults with learning
differences in collaboration
with
Myrna Orenstein. The
adults who experience the same
kind of shame and
marginalization at work as
children do at school, present
with mood or anxiety problems
largely as a result of repeated
defeats or failing to live up to
the potential they know they
have. Myrna brings
experiences and understanding to
this underappreciated group of
people who have few places to
turn. We hope to be more
responsive to adults with
learning differences and to
provide an array of assessment
and support services. Keep
up to date on these developments
in the
news. |
