about the practice

We offer high-quality clinical services for children of all ages, and their families, in person in Jupiter Florida and via telehealth in most US states.

Family Satisfaction with Services

McGinnis Behavioral keeps close tabs on quality and customer satisfaction. Immediately following case closure and taking all responses into account, families seen in-person or via telehealth tell us:

• The primary concern that prompted services is now GREATLY IMPROVED

• My child’s general functioning is GREATLY IMPROVED

• I feel EXTREMELY POSITIVE about the general approach used

• Our overall experience with McGinnis Behavioral was EXTREMELY POSITIVE

Discounts for Active Duty Military and First Responders

McGinnis Behavioral thanks active duty military and first responders and their families and is proud to offer a discount for our services in gratitude for their service.

AAP-Recommended ADHD Treatment

McGinnis Behavioral provides the American Academy of Pediatrics-recommended and most effective therapy approach for ADHD, which offers more durable effects than medication and can make medication unnecessary and lower dosages possible. The AAP additionally recommends families seek this approach when ADHD is suspected with children under age 6 before an ADHD diagnosis is made.*

Many factors contribute to an ADHD presentation. We look to identify and address any and all such factors (e.g., getting enough sleep is a big one!) in order to make the child and family much more successful and his or her behavior likely to no longer satisfy diagnostic criteria.

School accommodations are popular for children with an ADHD diagnosis. These are typically offered through a 504 Plan or IEP. However, we believe many if not most such accommodations hurt more than help, particularly for behavioral tendencies amenable to behavioral intervention. We routinely offer parents guidance on what accommodations make sense given the case, and what accommodations are likely to maintain the problems we are all trying to solve.

Challenges Addressed

Parents, educators, and multidisciplinary professionals seek our expertise for the following concerns, among others, for kids of all ages:

Anxiety, fears, phobias

school avoidance, selective mutism

ADHD, oppositional behavior

Anger, defiance, aggression

Seatbelt refusal, car behavior

Gaming/device addiction

Sleep and bedtime problems

morning routine

Depression, bereavement, coping

Peer and sibling conflict

Challenging Family Dynamics

CHALLENGES OF INTELLECTUAL GIFTEDNESS

learning problems

homework routine

TRICHOTILLOMANIA

Bedwetting (enuresis)

RETENTION AND soiling (encopresis)

Habits, tics, Tourette

Picky eating

Dr. McGinnis’s New Book!

Dr. McGinnis wrote the book on science-based behavioral healthcare for children and families!

An Amazon Best Seller in pediatrics, Dr. McGinnis’s new book, Introduction to Primary Care Behavioral Pediatrics, is available on Amazon.com and anywhere books are sold.

Services Expanded to Most of the US!

Dr. McGinnis now offers telehealth services to families residing in most US states.

Those states include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington DC, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

What Makes Our Approach Unique

Most forms of therapy for children are not as effective for most clinical problems as commonly believed.** This is largely because traditional talk and play therapies, as well as many newer approaches like neurofeedback, generally fail to engineer the child’s social and physical environment for success. Even the “gold standard” therapy approach, cognitive-behavioral therapy (or “CBT”), is relatively ineffective in treating ADHD for this reason.

What does work well? The short answer: for every case to be a “family therapy” case. That is, parents should be supported just as much as, or more than, the child is; parents are seen as invaluable members of the therapy team, not simply the ones who drive the child to therapy. A longer answer would have to include discussion of the science of behavior change, which is rarely found in practice but represents the conceptual core of primary care behavioral pediatrics.

Primary care behavioral pediatrics is provided by specially-trained physicians, behavioral psychologists, and clinical behavior analysts and represents high-quality, science-based care geared for effectiveness, efficiency, durability, and acceptability. Whereas traditional mental health services hold that emotions and behavior are a product of proposed mental disorders residing within the person, we know that mental health diagnosis has only ever represented a label for, and not the cause of, the problems at hand. Our services therefore hold the following, and more, to be more appropriate and useful considerations:

• Fundamental temperament (individual differences)

• Historical experiences (learning history)

• Present circumstances (triggers, goodness of fit with temperament)

• Lifestyle factors (such as sleep quantity and quality, and media use)

• Habits (what responses and sequences are practiced)

• Skills (might there be better ways to solve a problem when encountered?)

Thus, our approach is not about finding fault in the brain or in your parenting, but instead about optimizing certain lifestyle factors, teaching new skills, and bringing out the best in everyone within the family so the best is practiced to the point of habit. The approach is therefore positive, supportive, and empowering, often taking fewer than 10 sessions for lasting improvement. It’s no-nonsense and about engineering everything for sustained success!

Health Insurance

If you have out-of-network benefits, your health insurance will likely reimburse you for some or all of the cost of our services. See our Filing Out-of-Network page for more information!

Location

Three Palms Center

2141 S. Alternate A1A, Suite 330

Jupiter, Florida 33477

References:

* American Academy of Pediatrics (2020). Pediatric mental health: A compendium of AAP clinical practice guidelines and policies. American Academy of Pediatrics.

**Cortese, S., Ferrin, M., Brandeis, D., Holtmann, M., Aggensteiner, P., Daley, D., Santosh, P., Simonoff, E., Stevenson, J., Stringaris, A., Sonuga-Barke, E. J. S., & European ADHD Guidelines Group (2016). Neurofeedback for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Meta-analysis of clinical and neuropsychological outcomes from randomized controlled trials. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 55, 444-455.

**Jacobson, N. (2008). The overselling of therapy. In S. O. Lilienfeld, J. Ruscio, & S. J. Lynn (Eds.), Navigating the mindfield: A guide to separating science from pseudoscience in mental health (pp. 525-538). Prometheus.

**Kazdin, A. E. (2000). Psychotherapy for children and adolescents: Direction for research and practice. Oxford.

* Kazdin, A. E. (2005). Parent management training: Treatment for oppositional, aggressive, and antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. Oxford.

**Knouse, L. E. (2018). Cognitive-behavioral therapies for ADHD. In R. A. Barkley (Ed.), Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment (4th ed.), pp. 757-773. Guilford.

**McGinnis, J. C. (2024). Introduction to primary care behavioral pediatrics: A guide for behavior analysts. Routledge.

**Target, M., & Fonagy, P. (2005). The psychological treatment of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. In A. Roth & P. Fonagy (Eds.), What works for whom? A critical review of psychotherapy research (2nd ed.). Guilford.

* Wolraich, M. L., Hagan, J. F., Allan, C., Chan, E., Davison, D., Earls, M., Evans, S. W., Flinn, S. K., Froehlich, T., Frost, J., Holbrook, J. R., Lehmann, C. U., Lessen, H. R., Okechukwu, K., Pierce, K. L., Winner, J. D., Zurhellen, W., & Subcommittee on Children and Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (2019). Clinical practice guideline for the diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents. Pediatrics, 144, e20192528. doi: 10.1542/peds.2019-2528