The Common Sense Guide to Your Child's Special Needs: When to Worry, When to Wait, What to Do

Louis Pellegrino, M.D., is a pediatrician who completed subspecialty training in Neurodevelopmental Pediatrics at the University of Rochester, New York. Following his fellowship training, he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as an assistant professor and was Medical Director of the Cerebral Palsy Program at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Children's Seashore House. He is now Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He has written extensively on the subject of cerebral palsy and maintains cerebral palsy as a primary focus in his clinical, teaching, and academic pursuits, working in a variety of medical and educational settings in collaboration with many different professionals who devote themselves to the care of children with developmental disabilities. Dr. Pellegrino is board-certified in pediatrics and is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine, and the Society for Developmental Pediatrics. He lives in Hillsborough, New Jersey with his wife, Joan, and daughter, Elizabeth.

Mark L. Batshaw, M.D., is currently the "Fight for Children" Chair of Academic Medicine and Chief Academic Officer at the Children's National Medical Center (CNMC) in Washington, D.C., and serves as Professor and Chairman of Pediatrics and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C. Dr. Batshaw is also Director of the Children's Research Institute at CNMC. Dr. Batshaw is a board-certified neurodevelopmental pediatrician who has treated children with developmental disabilities for more than 25 years. Before moving to Washington in 1998, he was Physician-in-Chief of Children's Seashore House, the child development and rehabilitation institute of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and held the W.T. Grant Chair in Child Development at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Batshaw is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Following pediatric residency in his native Canada at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, he completed a fellowship in developmental pediatrics at the Kennedy Institute (now called the Kennedy Krieger Institute) and The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore.

He remained a professor at Johns Hopkins for 13 years and won the prestigious Alexander Schaffer teaching award while there. A Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Scholar and recipient of major grants from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Batshaw is director of the NIH-funded Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center at CNMC and continues to pursue his research on innovative treatments for inborn errors of metabolism, including gene therapy. Dr. Batshaw has published more than 130 articles, chapters, and reviews on his research interests and on the medical aspects of the care of children with disabilities. Dr. Batshaw was the founding editor in chief (1995 - 2001) of the journal Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews. He is also the editor of When Your Child Has a Disability: The Complete Sourcebook of Daily and Medical Care, Revised Edition (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2001), and Handbook of Developmental Disabilities (co-edited with Kurtz, Dowrick, & Levy; Aspen Publishers, 1996). Dr. Batshaw is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and is a member of the American Pediatric Society, the Society for Inherited Metabolic Disorders, the Society for Pediatric Research, and the Society for Developmental Pediatrics. Dr. Batshaw's investment in the well-being of children was first sparked by his parents, both of whom were social workers; his father was involved in modernizing the juvenile justice system in Quebec. Dr. Batshaw's wife, Karen, is a social worker in the field of international adoptions. His children also continue this legacy of making a difference: His daughter, Elissa, is a special education teacher and co-authored the chapter on special education in this edition of Children with Disabilities; his son Michael is a social worker; and his younger son, Drew, has overcome the challenges of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to graduate from Vassar College and enter business school.