The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: And Ohter Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook
by Bruce D. Perry , M. D., Ph. D., and Maia Szalavitz, published by Basic Books, 2006
ISBN # 978-0-465-05652-1My favorite quote from the book:
One of the greatest lessons I have learned in my work is the importance of simply taking the time, before doing anything else, to pay attention and listen. Because of the mirroring neurobiology
of our brains, the best ways to help someone else become calm and centered is to calm and center ourselves first--and then just pay attention.
When you approach a child from this perspective, the response you get is far different from when you simply assume you know what is going on and how to fix it. ......the more you try to see
the world from the child's point of view and the safer you make him feel, the better his behavior is likey to be and the more likely you are to find ways of further improving it.
(pages 244-245)
My favorite chapter in the book was one entitled The Kindness of Children in which a young boy's classmates were given a unique opportunity to see things from a different perspective and they responded with natural goodness and compassion. Very sweet story...makes me wish all school environments could be so nurturing for our children.
As part of the introduction, it is stated that:
In order to appreciate how children heal, we need to understand how they learn to love, how they cope with challenge, how stress affects them. And by recognizing the destructive
impact that violence and threat can have on the capacity to love and work, we can come to better understand ourselves and to nurture the people in our lives, especially the children.
Liz
