About the host.
Dr. Karen I. Wilson
The Journey to the Diverse Thinking · Different Learning Podcast
For the past 16 years, in her role as a pediatric neuropsychologist, Dr. Karen Wilson has evaluated children who face learning, processing or social-emotional challenges. The fact is every year children enter the school system and there's a percentage of those kids who think, feel or experience the world differently.
An estimated 2.4 million American school-aged children have been identified with learning disabilities, and even more concerning are the additional 15% of students (11.1 million) who struggle due to unidentified and unaddressed learning, attention and social-emotional issues. When kids struggle with learning or social-emotional challenges, it keeps them from reaching their goals.
While Dr. Wilson was able to help the young people in her private practice, she wanted to have a bigger impact. She wanted to reach more families and educators because there was a clear lack of information about the struggles that many children face at school and at home; for too many kids, identification and treatment of areas of difficulty are delayed, particularly when individuals see struggles as laziness or something that kids will “grow out of.”
First, Dr. Wilson created ChildNEXUS.com, a web platform that provides expert-curated content to parents and teachers around the identification of learning disorders, mental health issues in children and adolescents, intervention and advocacy. It also goes a step further and connects parents and educators with professionals who provide psychological and educational support services.
Dr. Wilson’s personal mission is to ensure that children who struggle with learning or social-emotional issues are able to achieve their full potential. So, in order to further increase access to information, she launched the Diverse Thinking · Different Learning Podcast, to share information and resources and increase access to professionals who specialize in the assessment, treatment, and educational support of children and adolescents. Through this podcast, Dr. Wilson hopes to inform, educate and empower parents who have kids who are struggling as well as individuals who work with those children and adolescents.