Bobby Newman

The best gift a professional can give a parent is the tools to understand our children. It is rare to find someone who has devoted his life to helping us discover our children the way that Dr. Bobby Newman, Ph.D., B.C.B.A.has. It is rare to find someone as effective in this task. He has reached out to families all across the upstate NY region. Despite his international presence and demand, he has taken us under his wing and offered knowledge, time, and experience. Perhaps he can't resist a good cause. Perhaps he likes the snow. Perhaps he just sees the effort of families to learn effective intervention tools. Whatever the reason, we are grateful for his commitment and more importantly, better for it.

Through consultations at home and schools, training workshops, e-mails, books and kind words, his influence is felt. We guess his pro bono work to be countless but will probably never know for sure since he insists on dodging any opportunities for credit. When approached by FEAT of Central New York, with the idea of naming our Professional Excellence Award in his honor, his request was that we follow the suggestion of a parent who advised naming it after his book When Everybody Cares . In his mind, it is about caring for our kids and not about him.

Parents call him honest, informative, compassionate, and genuine. Parents and professionals in his training class credit him with building an understanding of how behaviorally-based teaching is effective, individualized, and functional. They credit him with laying the foundation for the beginning of acceptance in this area for behaviorally-based teaching. Professionals have stated that they feel more confident in utilizing a behaviorally-based approach with local students. We owe this to his personal dedication to this area.

Aside from all of this, what is strikingly different and noteworthy is that his approach is not to lift our kids up to us. His approach is to lift us up to our children. Our children know that they are capable and strong. Bobby Newman empowers us to understand what our children already know. He arms us with information to realize the love and ability in each of our children.

What is powerful about his work is that while he is lifting us up to a place where we can discover our children, he is providing the tools by which our children can discover themselves. Bobby insists that the only proper goal of any educational or behavioral program is to increase the autonomy of the student, providing choices where none existed before. He believes that the ultimate goal is always the learning of skills that will foster independence and full participation in everything life has to offer. His insistence on best practices, effective intervention and confidence in our children is really a gentle nudge toward making miracles happen. It is a nudge for our children to explore their world. It is a nudge for us as parents to help them in this endeavor.

Our children have a beautiful and unique value to add to our world. Bobby Newman is just shining a spotlight on it. Thank you Bobby Newman, for all your work in the Upstate NY area. Thank you for your faith in our children.